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THE 



IKISH EACE 



PAST AND THE PRESENT. 




EET. AUG. J. THEBAUD, S. J. 



"I LOOK toward a land both old and young- — old in its Christianity, young in its promise of the 
future ; a nation which received grace before the Saxon came to Britain, and which has never ques- 
tioned it ; a Churchx which comprehends in its history the rise and &11 of Canterbury and York, which 
Augustin and Paulinus found, and Pole and Fisher left behind them. I contemplate a people which 
has had a long night, and wiU have an inevitable day. I am turning my eyes toward a hundred years 
to come, and I dimly see the Ireland I am gazing on become the road of passage and union between 
the two hemispheres, and the centre of the world. I see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populous- 
ness, France in vigor, and Spain in enthusiasm." John Heney Newmak. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 

549 & 551 BEOADWAY. 
1873. 



'%A 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S73, 

By a. J. TH:]fcBAUD, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



THE LIBRARY 

OF CONGRESS 

WASHlNOTOtf 






^ef 



^/ 



PEEFAOE. 



Count Joseph de Maistre, in his " Principe Generateiir des 
Constitutions Politiqiies " (Par. LXI.), says : " All nations mani- 
fest a particular and distinctive character, whicli deserves to be 
attentively considered." 

This thought of the great Catholic writer requires some 
development. 

It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay only 
that nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any 
one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it -with 
others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it 
a particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distin- 
guished from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of 
men which we call nations or races, we see the variety every- 
where observable in Nature, the variety by which God mani- 
fests the infinite activity of his creative power. 

When we take two extreme types of the human species — the 
Ashantee of Guinea, for instance, and any individual of one of 
the great civilized communities of Europe — the phenomenon of 
which we speak strikes us at once. But it may be remarked 
also, in comparing nations which have lived for ages in con- 
tiguity, and held constant intercourse one with the other from 
the time they began their national life, whose only boundary- 
line has been a mountain-chain or the banks of a broad river. 
They have each striking peculiarities which individualize and 
stamp them with a character of their own. 

How different are the peoples divided by the Rhine or by the 
Pyrenees ! How unlike those which the Straits of Dover run 
between ! And in Asia, what have the conterminous Chinese 
and Hindoos in common beyond the general characteristics of 
the human species which belong to all the children of Adam ? 

But what we must chiefly insist upon in the investigation we 
are now undertaking is, that the life of each is manifested by a 



iv PEEFACE. 

special physiognomy deeply imprinted in their whole history, 
which we here call character. What each of them is their history 
shows ; and there is no better means of judging of them than by 
reviewing the various events which compose their life. 

For the various events which go to form what is called the 
history of a nation are its individual actions, the spontaneous 
energy of its life ; and, as a man shows what he is by his acts, so 
does a nation or a race by the facts of its history. 

"VYhen we compare the vast despotisms of Asia, crystallized 
into forms which have scarcely changed since the first settlement 
of man in those immense plains, with the active and ever-moving 
smaller groups of Europeans settled in the west of the Old 
World since the dispersion of mankind, we see at a glance how 
the characters of both may be read in their respective annals. 
And, coming down gradually to less extreme cases, we recognize 
the same phenomenon manifested even in contiguous tribes, 
springing long ago, perhaps, from the same stock, but which have 
been formed into distinct nations by distinct ancestors, although 
they acknowledge a common origin. The antagonism in their 
character is immediately brought out by what historians or an- 
nalists have to say of them. 

Are not the cruelty and rapacity of the old Scandinavian race 
still visible in their descendants ? And the spirit of organization 
displayed by them from the beginning in the seizure, survey, 
and distribution of land — in the building of cities and castles — 
in the wise speculations of an extensive commerce — may not 
all these characteristics be read everywhere in the annals of the 
nations sprung from that original stock, grouped thousands of 
years ago around the Baltic and the JSTorthern Seas ? 

How different appear the pastoral and agricultural tribes 
which have, for the same length of time, inhabited the Swiss 
valleys and mountains ! With a multitude of usages, differing 
all, more or less, from each other ; with, perhaps, a wretched 
administration of internal affairs ; with frequent complaints of 
individuals, and partial conflicts among the rulers of those small 
communities — with all these defects, their simple and ever-uni- 
form chronicles reveal to us at once the simplicity and peaceful 
disposition of their character ; and, looking at them through the 
long ages of an obscure life, we at once recognize the cause of 
their general happiness in their constant want of ambition. 

And if, in the course of centuries, the character of a nation 
has changed — an event which seldom takes place, and when it 
does is due always to radical causes — its history will immediately 
make known to us the cause of the change, and point out unmis- 
takably its origin and source. 

Why is it, for instance, that the French nation, after having 
lived for near a thousand years under a single dynasty, cannot 



PEEFACE. y 

now find a government agreeable to its modern aspirations ? It 
is insuflicient to ascribe tbe fact to the fickleness of the French 
temper. Dm-ing ten centuries no European nation has been 
more uniform and more attached to its government. If to-day 
the case is altogether reversed, the fact cannot be explained ex- 
cept by a radical change in the character of the nation. Firmly 
fixed by its own national determination of purpose and by the 
deep studies of the Middle Ages — nowhere more remarkable than 
in Paris, which was at that time the centre of the activity of 
Catholic Europe — the French mind, first thrown by Protestant- 
ism into the vortex of controversy, gradually declined to the 
consideration of mere philosophical Utopias, until, rejecting at 
last its long-received convictions, it abandoned itself to the ever- 
shifting delusions of opinions and theories, which led finally to 
skepticism and unbelief in every branch of knowledge, even the 
most necessary to the happiness of any community of men. 
Other causes, no doubt, might also be assigned for the remark- 
able change now under our consideration. The one we have 
pointed out was the chief. 

To the same causes, acting now on a larger scale throughout 
Europe, we ascribe the same radical changes which we see taking 
place in the various nations composing it : every thing brought 
everywhere in question ; the mind of all unsettled ; a real an- 
archy of intellect spreading wider and wider even in countries 
which until now had stood firm against it. Hence constant 
revolutions unheard of hitherto ; nothing stable ; and men ex- 
pecting with awe a more frightful and radical overturning still 
of every thing that makes life valuable and dear. 

Are not these tragic convulsions the black and spotted types 
wherein we read the altered character of modern nations ; are 
they not the natural expression of their fitful and delirious life ? 

These considerations, which might be indefinitely prolonged, 
show the truth of the phrase of Joseph de Maistre that " all 
nations manifest a particular and distinctive character, which 
deserves to be attentively considered " 

The fact is, in this kind of study is contained the only pos- 
sible philosophy of history for modern times. 

With respect to ages that have passed away, to nations which 
have run their full course, a nobler study is possible — the more 
so because inspired writers have traced the way. Thus Bossuet 
wrote his celebrated " Discours." But he stopped wisely at the 
coming of our Lord. As to the events anterior to that great 
epoch, he spoke often like a prophet of ancient times ; he seemed 
at times to be initiated in the designs of God himself. And, in 
truth, he had them traced by the very Spirit of God ; and, lifted 
by his elevated mind to the level of those sublime thoughts, he 
had only to touch them with the magic of his style. 



vi PEEFAOE. 

But of sulDsequent times lie did not speak, except to rehearse 
tlie well-known facts of modern history, whose secret is not yet 
revealed, because their development is still being worked out, 
and no conclusion has been reached which might furnish the key 
to the whole. 

There remains, therefore, but one thing to do : to consider 
each nation apart, and read its character in its history. Should 
this be done for all, the only practical philosophy of modern 
history would be written. For then we should have accomplished 
morally for men what, in the physical order, zoologists accomplish 
for the immense number of living beings which God has spread 
over the surface of the earth. They might be classiiied accord- 
ing to a certain order of the ascending or descending moral scale. 
We could judge them rightly, conformably with the standard of 
right or wrong, which is in the absolute possession of the Chris- 
tian conscience. Brilliant but baneful qualities would no longer 
impose on the credulity of mankind, and men would not be led 
astray in their judgments by the rule of expediency or success 
which generally dictates to historians the estimate they form and 
inculcate on their readers of the worth of some nations, and the 
insignificance or even odiousness of others. 

In the impossibility under which we labor of penetrating, at 
the present time, the real designs of Providence with respect to 
the various races of men, so great an undertaking, embracing the 
j)rincipal, if not all, modern races, would be one of the most use- 
ful efibrts of human genius for the spread of truth and virtue 
among men. 

Our purport is not of such vast import. We shall take in 
these pages for the object of our study one of the smallest and, 
apparently, most insignificant nations of modern Europe — the 
Irish. For several ages they have lost even what generally con- 
stitutes the basis of nationality, self-government ; yet they have 
preserved their individuality as strongly marked as though they 
were still ruled by the O'Neill dynasty. 

And we may here remark that the number of a people and the 
size of its territory have absolutely no bearing on the estimate 
which we ought to form of its character. Who would say that 
the Chinese 'are the most interesting and commendable nation 
on the surface of the globe ? They are certainly the most an- 
cient and most populous ; their code of precise and formal mo- 
rality is the most exact and clear that philosophers could ever dic- 
tate, and succeed in giving as law to a great' people. That code 
has been followed during a long series of ages. Most discoveries 
of modern European science were known to them long before 
they were found out among us ; agriculture, that first of arts, 
which most economists consider as the great test whereby to 
judge of the worth of a nation, is and always has been carried 



PEEFAOE. vii 

by them to a perfection unknown to us. Yet, the smallest Euro- 
pean nationality is, in truth, more interesting and instructive 
than the vast Celestial Empire can ever be — whose long annals 
are all compassed within a few hundred pages of a frigid narra- 
tive, void of lifej and altogether void of soiu. 

]3ut Avhy do we select, among so many others, the Irish na- 
tion, which is so little known, of such little influence, whose his- 
tory occupies only a few lines in the general annals of the world, 
and whose very ownership has rested in the hands of foreigners 
for centuries ? 

"VVe select it, first, because it is and always has been thorough- 
ly Catholic, from the day when it first embraced Christianity ; 
and this, under the circumstances, we take to be the best proof, 
not only of supreme good sense, but, moreover, of an elevated, 
even a sublime character. In their martyrdom of three centu- 
ries, the Irish have displayed the greatness of soul of a Polycarp, 
and the simplicity of an Agnes. And the Catholicity which 
they have always professed has been, from the beginning, of a 
thorough and uncompromising character. All modern European 
nations, it is true, have had their birth in the bosom of the 
Church. She had nursed them all, educated them all, made 
them all what they were, when they began to think of emanci- 
pating themselves from her ; and the Catholic, that is, the Chris- 
tian religion, in its essence, is supernatural ; the creed of the 
apostles, the sacramental system, the very history of Christianity, 
transport man directly into a region far beyond the earth. 

Wherever the Christian religion has been preached, nations 
have awakened to this new sense of faith in the supernatural, 
and it is there they have tasted of that strong food which made 
and which makes them still so superior to all other races of men. 
But, as we shall see, in no country has this been the case so thor- 
oughly as in Ireland. Whatever may have been the cause, the 
Irish were at once, and have ever since continued, thoroughly 
impregnated with supernatural ideas. For several centuries after 
St. Patrick the island was " the Isle of Saints," a place midway 
between heaven and earth, where angels and the saints of heaven 
came to dwell with mere mortals. The Christian belief was 
adopted by them to the letter ; and, if Christianity is truth, 
ought it not to be so % Such a nation, then, which received such 
a thorough Christian education — an education never repudiated 
one iota during the ages following its reception — deserves a thor- 
ough examination at our hands. 

We select it, secondly, because the Irish have successfully re- 
fused ever since to enter into the various currents of European 
opinion, although, by position and still more by religion, they 
formed a part of Europe. They have thus retained a character 
of their own, unlike that of any other nation. To this day, they 



yiji PREFACE. 

stand firm in their admirable stubbornness ; and tlins, wben En- 
rope shall be shaken and tottering, they will still stand firm. In 
the words of Moore, addressed to his own country : 

" The nations have fallen and thon still art young ; 
Thy sun is just rising when others are set ; 
And though slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung, 
The full noon of freedom shall beam round thee yet." 

That constant refusal of the Irish to fall in with the rapid 
torrent of European thought and progress, as it is called, is the 
strangest phenomenon in their history, and gives them at first 
an outlandish look, which many have not hesitated to call bar- 
barism. We hope thoroughly to vindicate their character from 
such a foul aspersion, and to show this phenomenon as the secret 
cause of their final success, which is now all but secured ; and 
this feature alone of their national life adds to their character an 
interest which we find in no other Christian nation. 

"We select it, thirdly, because there is no doubt that the Irish 
is the most ancient nationality of Western Europe ; and although, 
as in the case of the Chinese, the advantage of going up to the 
very cradle of mankind is not sufficient to impart interest to 
frigid annals, when that prerogative is united to a vivid life 
and an exuberant individuality, nothing contributes more to 
render a nation worthy of study than hoariness of age, and its 
derivation from a certain and definite primitive stock. 

It is true that, in reading the first chapters of all the various 
histories of Ireland, the foreign reader is struck and almost 
shocked by the dogmatism of the writers, who invariably, and 
with a truly Irish assurance, begin with one of the sons of Ja- 
phet, and, following the Hebrew or Septuagint chronology, de- 
scribe without flinching the various colonizations of Erin, not 
omitting the synchronism of Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Ro- 
man history. A smile is at first the natural consequence of such ' 
assertions ; and, indeed, there is no obligation whatever to 
believe that every thing happened exactly as they relate. • 

But when the large quartos and octavos which are now pub- 
lished from time to time by the students of Irish antiquarian lore 
are opened, read, and pondered over, at least one consequence is 
drawn from them which strikes the reader with astonishment. 
" There can be no doubt," every candid mind says to itself, " that 
this nation has preceded in time all those which have flourished 
on the earth, with the exception, perhaps, of the Chinese, and 
that it remains the same to-day." At least, many years before 
Christ, a race of men inhabited Ireland exactly identical with its 
present population (except that it did not enjoy the light of the 
true religion), yet very superior to it in point of material well- 



PREFACE. ix 

being. ]!^ot a race of cannibals, as tbe credulous Diodorus 
Siculus, on the strengtli of some vague tradition, was pleased to 
delineate ; but a people acquainted with the use of the precious "1^ 
metals, with the manufacture of fine tissues, fond of music and 
of song, enjoying its literature and its books ; often disturbed, it 
is true, by feuds and contentions, but, on the whole, living hap- 
pily under the patriarchal rule of the clan system. ' 

The ruins which are now explored, the relics of antiquity 
which are often exhumed, the very implements and utensils pre- 
served by the careful hand of the antiquarian — every thing, so 
different from the rude flint arrows and barbarous weapons of 
our llTorth American Indians and of the European savages of the 
Stone period, denotes a state of civilization, astonishing indeed, 
when we reflect that real objects of art embellished the dwellings 
of Irishmen probably before the foundation of E-ome, and per- 
haps when Greece was as yet in a state of heroic barbarism. , 

And this high antiquity is proved by literature as well as by ^ 
art. " The ancient Irish," says one of their latest historians, M. 
Haverty, " attributed the utmost importance to the accuracy of 
their historic compositions for social reasons. Their whole system 
of society — every question as to right of property — turned upon 
the descent of families and the principle of clanship ; so that it 
cannot be supposed that mere fables would be tolerated instead 
of facts, where every social claim was to be decided on their author- 
ity. A man's name is scarcely mentioned in our annals without 
the addition of his forefathers for several generations — a thing 
which rarely occurs in those of other countries. 

" Again, when we arrive at the era of Christianity in Ireland, 
we find that our ancient annals stand the test of verification by 
science with a success which not only establishes their character 
for truthfulness at that period, but vindicates the records of pre- 
ceding dates involved in it." 

The most confirmed skeptic cannot refuse to believe that at 
the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, in 432, the whole 
island was governed by institutions exactly similar to those of 
Gaul when Julius Csesar entered it 400 years before ; that this 
state must have existed for a long time anterior to that date ; 
and that the reception of the new religion, with all the circum- 
stances which attended it, introduced the nation at once into a 
happy and social state, which other European countries, at that 
time convulsed by barbarian invasions, did not attain till several 
centuries later. 

These various considerations would alone suffice to show the 
real importance of the study we undertake ; but a much more 
powerful incentive to it exists in the very nature of the annals 
of the nation itself. 

Ireland is a country which, during the last thousand years, 



X PEEFACE. 

\ has maintained a constant struggle against three powerful ene- 
[ mies, and lias finally conquered them all. 

The first stage of the conflict was that against the ^Northmen. 
It lasted three centuries, and ended in the almost complete dis- 
appearance of this foe. 

The second act of the great drama occupied a period of four 
hundred years, during which all the resources of the Irish clans 
were arrayed against Anglo-l^orman feudalism, which had finally 
to succumb ; so that Erin remained the only spot in Europe 
where feudal institutions never prevailed. 

The last part of this fearful trilogy was a conflict of three cen- 
turies with Protestantism; and the final victory is no longer 
doubtful. 

Can any other modern people offer to the meditation, and, 
we must say, to the admiration of the Christian reader, a more 
interesting spectacle? The only European nation which can 
almost compete with the constancy and never-dying energy of 
Ireland is the Spanish in its struggle of seven centuries with the 
Moors. 

We have thought, therefore, that there might be some real 
interest and profit to be derived from the study of this eventful 
national life — an interest and a profit which will appear as we 
study it more in detail. 

It may be said that the threefold conflict which we have 
outlined might be condensed into the surprising fact that all 
efforts to drag Ireland into the current of European affairs and 
influence have invariably failed. This is the key to the under- 
standing of her whole history. 

Even originally, when it formed but a small portion of the 
great Celtic race, there existed in the Irish branch a peculiarity of 
its own, which stamped it with features easy to be distinguished. 
The gross idolatry of the Gauls never prevailed among the Irish ; 
the Bardic system was more fully developed among them than 
among any other Celtic nation. Song, festivity, humor, ruled 
there much more universally than elsewhere. There were among 
them more harpers and poets than even genealogists and anti- 
quarians, although the branches of study represented by these 
last were certainly as well cultivated among them as among the 
Celts of Gaul, Spain, or Italy. 

But it is chiefly after the introduction of Christianity among 
them, when it appeared finally decreed that they should belong 
morally and social [y to Europe, it is chiefly then that their pur- 
pose, however unconscious they may have been of its tendency, 
seems more defined of opening up for themselves a path of their 
own. And in this they followed only the promptings of l^ature. 

The only people in Europe which remained untouched by 
what is called Roman civilization — never having seen a Boman 



PEEFAOE. Xi 

soldier on tlieir stores ; never having been Messed by the con- 
struction of Roman baths and amphitheatres ; never having lis- 
tened to the declamations of Roman rhetoricians and sophists, nor 
received the decrees of Roman prsetors, nor been subject to the 
exactions of the Roman tisc — they never saw among them, in 
halls and basilicas erected under the direction of Rom.an archi- 
tects, Roman judges, governors, proconsuls, enforcing the de- 
crees of the Caesars against the introduction or propagation of 
the Christian religion. Hence it entered in to them without 
opposition and bloodshed. 

But the new religion, far from depriving them of their charac- 
teristics, consecrated and made them lasting. They had their 
primitive traditions and tastes, their patriarchal government 
and manners, their ideas of true freedom and honor, reaching 
back almost to the cradle of mankind. They resolved to hold 
these against all comers, and they have been faithful to their 
resolve down to our own times. Fourteen hundred years of 
history since Patrick preached to them proves it clearly enough. 

First, then, although the Germanic tribes of the first invasion, 
as it is called, did not reach their shore, for the reason that the 
Germans, as little as the Celts, never possessed a navy — although 
neither Frank, nor Yandal, nor Hun, renewed among them the 
horrors witnessed in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa— they could 
not remain safe from the Scandinavian pirates, whose vessels 
scoured all the northern seas before they could enter the Medi- 
terranean through the Straits of Gibraltar. 

The Northmen, the Danes, came and tried to establish them- 
selves among them and inculcate their northern manners, system, 
and municipal life. They succeeded in England, Holland, the 
north of France, and the south of Italy ; in a word, wherever the y' 
wind had driven their hide-bound boats. The Irish was the only 
nation of Western Europe which beat them back, and refused 
to receive the boon of their higher civilization. 

As soon as the glories of the reign of Charlemagne had gone 
down in a sunset of splendor, the Northmen entered unopposed 
all the great rivers of France and Spain. They speedily con- 
quered England. On all sides they ravaged the country and 
destroyed the population, whose only defence consisted in prayers 
to Heaven, with here and there an heroic bishop or count. In 
Ireland alone the Danes found to their cost that the Irish spear 
was thrust with a steady and firm hand ; and after two hundred 
years of struggle not only had they not arrived n.t the survey and 
division of the soil, as wherever else they had set foot, but, after 
Clontarf, the few cities they still occupied were comj)elled to pay 
tribute to the Irish Ard-Righ. Hence all attempts to substitute 
the Scandinavian social system for that of the Irish septs and 
clans were forever frustrated. City life and maritime enter- 



xii PEEFAOE. 

prises, together witli commerce and trade, were as scornfully 
rejected as the worship of Thor and Odin. 

Soon after this first victory of Ireland over Northern Europe, 
the Anglo-iNorman invasion originated a second struggle of longer 
duration and mightier import. The English Strongbow replaced 
the Danes with J^orman freebooters, who occupied the precise 
spots which the new owners had reconquered from the JN^orth- 
men, and never an inch more. Then a great spectacle was offered 
to the world, which has too much escaped the observation, of his- 
torians, and to which we intend to draw the attention of our 
readers. 

The primitive, simple, patriarchal system of clanship was 
confronted by the stern, young, ferocious feudal system, which 
was then beginning to prevail all over Europe. The question 
was. Would Ireland consent to become European as Europe was 
then organizing herself ? The struggle, as we shall see, between 
the Irish and tlie English in the twelfth century and later on, was 
merely a contest between the sept system and feudalism, involv- 
ing, it is true, the possession of land. And, at the end of a con- 
test lasting four hundred years, feudalism was .so thoroughly de- 
1 feated that the English of the Pale adopted the Irish manners, 
customs, and even language, and formed only new septs among 
the old ones. 

y Hence Ireland escaped allthe commotions produced in Europe 

A by the consequences of the feudal system : 

^' I. Serfdom, which was generally substituted for slavery, never 

' existed in Ireland, slavery having disappeared before the entry 
of the Anglo-Kormans. 

II. The universal oppression of the lower classes, which caused 
the simultaneous rising of the communes all over Europe, never 
having existed in Ireland, we shall not be surprised to find no 
mention in Irish history of that wide-spread institution of the 
eleventh and following centuries. 

III. An immense advantage which Ireland derived from her 
isolation, on which she always insisted, was her being altogether 
freed from the fearful medigeval heresies which convulsed France 
particularly for a long period, and which invariably came from 
the East. 

For Erin remained so completely shut off from the rest of 
Europe, that, in spite of its ardent Catholicism, the Crusades 
were never preached to its inhabitants ; and, if some individual 
Irishman joined the ranks of the warriors led to Palestine by 
Kichard Coeur de Lion, the nation was in no way affected by the 
good or bad results which everywhere ensued from the marching 
of the Christian armies against the Moslem. 

The sects which sprang from Manicheism were certainly an 
evil consequence of the holy wars ; and it would be a great error 



PEEFACE. xiii 

to tMnk that those heresies were short-lived and aifected only 
for a brief space of time the social and moral state of Em'ope. It 
may be said that their fearfully disorganizing influence lasts to 
this day. If modern secret societies do not, in point of fact, de- 
rive their existence directly from the Bulgarism and Manicheism 
of the Middle Ages, there is no doubt that those dark errors, 
which imposed on all their adepts a stern secrecy, paved the way 
for the consj)iracies of our times. Hence Ireland, not having 
felt the effect of the former heresies, is in our days almost free 
from the universal contagion now decomposing the social fabric 
on all sides. 

But it is chiefly in modern times that the successful resistance 
offered by Ireland to many wide-spread European evils, and its 
strong attachment to its old customs, will evoke our wonder. 

Clanship reigned still over more than four-fifths of the island 
when the Portuguese were conquering a great part of India, and 
the Spaniards making Central and South America a province of 
their almost universal monarchy. 

The poets, harpers, antiquarians, genealogists, and students 
of Brehon law, still held full sway over almost the whole island, 
when the revival of pagan learning was, we may say, convulsing 
Italy, giving a new direction to the ideas of Germany, and pene- 
trating France, Holland, and Switzerland. Happy were the Irish 
to escape that brilliant but fatal invasion of mythology and 
Grecian art and literature ! Had they not received enough of 
Greek and Latin lore at the hands of their first apostles and mis- 
sionaries, and through the instrumentality of the numerous 
amanuenses and miniaturists in their monasteries and eon- 
vents ? Those holy men had brought them what Christian Rome 
had purified of the old pagan dross, and sanctified by the new 
Divine Spirit. 

Yirgin Ireland having thus remained undefiled, and never 
having even been agitated by all those earlier causes of succeed- 
ing revolutions. Protestantism, the final explosion of them all, 
could make no impression on her — a fact which remains to this 
day the brightest proof of her strength and vigor. 

But, before speaking of this last conflict, we must meet an 
objection which will naturally present itself. 

To steadily refuse to enter into the current of European 
thought, and object to submit in any way to its influence, is, 
pretend many, really to reject the claims of civilization, and per- 
sist in refusing to enter upon the path of progress. The Korth ' 
American savage has always been most persistent in this stub- 
born opposition to civilized life, and no one has as yet considered 
this a praiseworthy attribute. The more barbarous a tribe, the 
more firmly it adheres to its traditions, the more pertinaciously 
it follows the customs of its ancestors. They are immovable, 



xiy PEEFACE. 

and cannot be brouglit to adopt usages new to them, even wlien 
tliey see the immense advantages they would reap from their 
adoption. Hence the greater number of writers, chiefly Enghsh, 
who have treated of Irish affairs, unhesitatingly call them bar- 
barians, precisely on account of their stubbornness in rejecting 
the advances of the Anglo-N^orman invaders. Sir John Davis, 
the attorney-general of James I., could scarcely write a page on 
the subject without reverting to this idea, 
] We answer that the Irish, even before their conversion to 
Christianity, but chiefly after, were not barbarians ; they never 
opposed true progress ; and they became, in fact, in the sixth, 
y seventh, and eighth centuries, the moral and scientific educators 
K of the greater part of Europe. What they refused to adopt they 
were right in rejecting. But, as there are still many men who, 
without ever having studied the question, do not hesitate, even 
in onr days, to throw barbarism in their teeth, and attribute to 
it the pitiable condition which the Irish to-day present to the 
world, we add a few further considerations on this point. 

First, then, we say, barbarians have no history ; and the 
Irish certainly had a history long before St. Patrick converted 
them. Until lately, it is true, the common opinion of writers on 
Ireland was adverse to this assertion of ours ; but, after the 
labors of modern antiquarians — of such men as O'Donovan, Todd, 
E. O'Curry, and others — there can no longer be any doubt on 
the subject. If Julius Csesar was right in stating that the Druids 
of Gaul confined themselves to oral teaching — and the statement 
may very well be questioned, with the light of present informa- 
tion on the subject — it is now proved that the Ollamhs of Erin 
kept written annals which went back to a very remote age of the 
world. The numerous histories and chronicles written by monks 
of the sixth and following centuries, the authenticity of which 
cannot be denied, evidently presuppose anterior compositions 
dating much farther back than the introduction of our holy 
religion into Ireland, which the Christian annalists had in their 
hands when they wrote their books, sometimes in Latin, some- 
times in old Irish, sometimes in a strange medley of both lan- 
guages. It is now known that St. Patrick brought to Ireland 
the Roman alphabet only, and that it was thenceforth used not 
merely for the ritual of the Church, and the dissemination of the 
Bible and of the works of the Holy Fathers, but likewise for the 
transcription, in these newly-consecrated symbols of thought, of 
' the old manuscripts of the island ; which soon disappeared, in 
the far greater number of instances at least, owing to the favor 
in which the Roman characters were held by the people and 
their instructors the bishops and monks. Let those precious old 
symbols be called Ogham, or by any other name — there must 
have been something of the kind. 



PEEFACE. XV 

If any one insists that such was not the case, he must of neces- 
sity admit that the oral teaching of the Ollamhs was so perfect 
and so universally current in the same formulas all over the 
island, that such oral teaching really took the place of writing ; 
and in this case, also, which is scarcely possible, however, Ireland 
had an authentic history. This last supposition, certainly, can 
hardly be credited ; and yet, if the first be rejected, it must be 
admitted, since it cannot be imagined that subsequent Irish his- 
torians, numerous as they became in time, could have agreed so 
well together, and remained so consistent with themselves, and 
so perfectly accurate in their descriptions of places and things in 
general, without anterior authentic documents of some kind or 
other, on which they could rely. Any person who has merely 
glanced at the astonishing production called the " Annals of the 
Four Masters," must necessarily be of this opinion. 

In no nation in the world are there found so many old his- 
tories, annals, chronicles, etc., as among the Irish ; and that fact 
alone suffices to prove that in periods most ancient they were 
truly a civilized nation, since they attached such importance to 
the records of events then taking place among them. 

But the Irish were, moreover, a branch of the great Celtic 
race, whose renown for wisdom, science, and valor, was spread 
through all parts, particularly among the Greeks. The few de- 
tails we purpose giving on the subject will convince the reader 
that among the nations of antiquity they held a prominent posi- 
tion ; and not only were they possessed of a civilization of their 
own, not despicable even in the eyes of a Roman — of the great 
Julius himself — but they were ever most susceptible of every 
kind of progress, and consequently eager to adopt all the social 
benefits which their intercourse with Rome brought them. At 
least, they did so as soon as, acknowledging the superior power 
of the enemy, they had the good sense to feel that it was all- 
important to imitate him. Ilence-^ sprang that Gallo-Roman 
civilization which obtained during the first five or six centuries 
of the Christian era — a civilization which the barbarians of the 
E'orth endeavored to destroy, but to which they themselves finally 
yielded, by embracing Christianity, and gradually changing their 
language and customs. 

Everywhere — in Gaul, Italy, Britain, and Ireland — did the 
Celts manifest that susceptibility to progress which is the invari- 
able mark of a state antagonistic to barbarism. In this they to- 
tally differed from the Yandals and Huns, whom it took the 
Church such a dreary period to conquer, and whom no other 
power save the religion of Christ could have subdued. 

These few words are sufficient for our present purpose. We 
proceed to show that, in their stubborn opposition to many a 
current of European opinion, they acted rightly. 



xvi PEEFAOE. 

Tliej" acted riglitly, first of all, in excluding from tlieir course 
of studies at Bangor, Clonfert, Armagh, Clonmacnoise, and other 
places, the subtleties of Greek philosophy, which occasioned 
heresies in Europe and Asia during the first ages of the Church, 
and were the cause of so many social and political convulsions. 
By adhering strictly — a little too strictly, perhaps — to their tra- 
ditional method of developing thought, they kept error far from 
their universities, and presented, in the sixth, seventh, and eighth 
centuries, the remarkable spectacle in Ireland, France, Germany, 
Switzerland, and even IlTorthern Italy, of numerous schools 
wherein no wrangling found a place, and whence never issued a 
single proposition which Rome found reason to censure. They 
were at that time the educators of Christian Europe, and not 
TiC even a breath of suspicion was ever raised against any one of their 
innumerable teachers. If their mind, in general, did not on that 
account attain the acuteness of the French, Italians, or Ger- 
mans, it was at all times safer and more guarded. Even their 
later hostility to the English Pale, after the eleventh century, 
was most useful, from its warning against the teachings of prel- 
ates sent from the English Universities ot Oxford and Cambridge ; 
and Rome seems to have approved of that opposition, by using 
all her power in appointing to Irish sees, even within the Pale, 
prelates chosen from the Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan, 
and Carmelite orders, in preference to secular ecclesiastics edu- 
cated in the great seats of English learning. 

Thus the Irish, by opening their schools gratuitously to all 
Europe, but chiefiy to Anglo-Saxon England, were not only of^ 
immense service to the Church, but showed how fully they ap- 
preciated the benefits of true civilization, and how ready they 
were to extend it by their traditional teaching. 'Nor did they 
confine themselves to receiving scholars in their midst : they sent 
abroad, . during those ages, armies of zealous missionaries and 
learned men to Christianize the heathen, or educate the newly- 
converted Germanic tribes in Merovingian and Carlo vingian Gaul, 
in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian England, in'Lombardian Italy, 
in the very hives of those ferocious tribes which peopled the ever- 
moving and at that time convulsed Germany. 

11. They were right in refusing to submit to the Scandinavian 
yoke, and accept from those who would impose it their taste for 
city life, and the spirit of maritime enterprise and extensive com- 
merce. We shall see that this was at the bottom of their two 
centuries of struggle with the Danes ; that they were animated 
throughout that conflict by their ardent zeal for the Christian 
religion, which tlie ISTorthmen came to destroy. There is no need 
of dwelling on this point, as we are not aware that any one, even 
their bitterest enemies, has found fault with them here. 
^ III. They were right in opposing feudahsm, and steadily ro- 



PEEFACE. xvii 

fusing to admit it on their soil. Feudal Europe beheld with 
surprise the inhabitants of a small island on the verge of the 
Western Continent level to the ground the feudal castles as soon 
as they were built ; reject with scorn the invaders' claim to their 
soil, after they had signed papers which they could not under- 
stand ; hold fast to their patriarchal usages in opposition to the 
new-born European notions of paramount kings, of dukes, earls, 
counts, and viscounts ; fight for four hundred years against 
what the whole of Europe had eveiywhere else accepted, and 
conquer in the end ; so that the Irish of to-day can say with 
just pride, " Our island has never submitted to mediseval feu- Y- 
dalism." 

And hence the island has escaped the modern results of the 
system, which we all witness to-day in the terrible hostility of 
class arrayed against class, the poor against the rich, the lower 
orders against the higher. The opposition in Ireland between 
the oppressed and the oppressor is of a very different character, 
as we shall see later. But the fact is, that the clan system, with 
all its striking defects, had at least this immense advantage, that 
the clansmen did not look upon their chieftains as " lords and 
masters," but as men of the same blood, true relations, and 
friends; neither did the heads of the clans look on their men as 
villeins, serfs, or chattels, but as companions-in-arms, foster- 
brothers, supporters, and allies. Hence the opposition which 
exists in our days throughout Europe between class and class, 
has never existed in Ireland. Let a son of their old chiefs, if 
one can yet be found, go back to them, even but for a few days, 
after centuries of estrangement, and they are ready to welcome 
him yet, as a loyal nation would welcome her long-absent king, 
as a family would receive a father it esteemed lost. "We know 
in what manner a son of a French McMahon was lately received 
among them. , 

All hostility is reserved for the foreigner, the invader, the 
oppressor of centuries, because, in the opinion of the natives, 
these have no real right to dwell on a soil they have impover- 
ished, and which they tried in vain to enslave. This, at least, is 
their feeling. But the sons of the soil, whether rich or poor, 
high or low, are all united in a holy brotherhood. This state of 
things they have preserved by the exclusion of feudalism. 

tV. The Irish were right in not accepting from Europe what 
is known as the " revival of learning ; " at least, as carried almost 
to the excess of modern paganism by its first promoters. 

This " revival " did not reach Ireland. Many will, doubt- 
less, attribute this fact to the almost total exclusion then sup- 
posed to exist of Ireland from all European intercourse. It would 
be a great error to imagine such to have been the cause. Indeed, 
at that very time, Ireland was more in daily contact with Italy, 



xviii " PEEFACE. 

France, and Spain, tlian had been the case since the eighth cen- 
tury. 

If the Irish were right in holding steadfast to the line of their 
traditional studies, in rejecting the city life and commercial spirit 
of the Danes, in opposing Anglo-JSTorman feudalism, and, finally, 
in not accepting the more than doubtful advantages flowing from 
the literary revival of the fifteenth century ; if, in all this, they 
did not oppose true progress, but merely wished to advance in the 
peculiar path opened up to them by the Christianity which they 
had received more fully, with more earnestness, and with a view 
to a greater development of the supernatural idea, than any other 
European nation — then, beyond all other modes, did they dis- 
play their strength of will and their undying national vitality in 
their resistance to Protestantism — a resistance which has been 
called opposition to progress, but the success of which to-day 
proves beyond question that they were right. 

It was, the reader may remark, a resistance to the whole of 
Northern Europe, wherein their island was included. For, the 
whole of I^orthern Europe rebelled against the Church at the 
beginning of the sixteenth century, to enter upon a new road of 
progress and civilization, as it has been called, ending finally in 
the frightful abyss of materialism and atheism which now gapes 
under the feet of modern nations — an abyss in whose yawning 
womb nuUus ordo, sed senipiternus horror habitat. The end of 
that progress is now plain enough : political and social convul- 
sions, without any other probable issue than final anarchy, unless 
nations consent at last to retrace their steps and reorganize Chris- 
tendom. 

But this was not apparent to the eyes of ordinary thinkers 
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Only a few great 
minds saw the logical consequences of the premises laid down 
by Protestantism, and predicted something of what we now 
see. 

The Irish was the only northern nation which, to a man, op- 
posed the terrible delusion, and, at the cost of all that is dear, 
waged against it a relentless war. 

" To a man ; " for, in spite of all the wiles of Henry YIII., 
who brought every resource of his political talent into play, in 
order to win over to his side the great chieftains of the nation — - 
in spite of all the efforts of Elizabeth, who either ti'ied to over- 
come their resistance by her numerous armies, or, by the alhire- 
ments of her court, strove her best, like her father, to woo to her 
allegiance the great leaders of the chief clans, particularly O'jSTeill 
of Tyrone — at the end of her lon^ reign, after nearly a hundred 
years of Protestantism, only sixty Irishmen of all classes had re- 
ceived the new religion. 

At first, the struggle assumed a character more political than 



PREFACE. xix 

religious, and Queen Elizabetli did lier best to give it, apparently, 
that character. But for her, religion meant politics ; and, had 
the Irish consented to accept the religious changes introduced 
by her father and herself, there would have been no question of 
" rebellion," and no army would have been sent to crush it. The 
Irish chieftains knew this well ; hence, whenever the queen came 
to terms with them, the first article on which they invariably in- 
sisted was the freedom of their religion. 

But, under the Stuarts, and later on, the mask was entirely 
thrown aside, and the question between England and Ireland re- 
duced itself, we may say, to one of religion merely. All the 
political entanglements in which the Irish found themselves in- 
volved by their loyalty to the Stuarts and their opposition to the 
Koundheads, never constituted the chief difficulty of their posi- 
tion. They were " Papists : " this was their great crime in the 
eyes of their enemies. Cromwell would certainly never have 
endeavored to exterminate them as he did, had they apostatized 
and become ranting Puritans. One of our main points in the 
following pages will be to give prominence to this view of the 
question. If it had been understood from the first, the army of 
heroes who died for their God and their country would long ere 
this have been enrolled in the number of Christian martyrs. 

The subsequent policy of England, chiefly after the English 
Revolution of 1688 and the defeat of James IL, clearly shows the 
soundness of our interpretation of history. The " penal code," 
under Queen Anne, and later on, at least has the merit of being 
free from hypocrisy and cant. It is an open religious persecu- 
tion, as, in fact, it had been from the beginning. 

We shall have, therefore, before our eyes the great spectacle 
of a nation suffering a martyrdom of three centuries. All the 
persecutions of the Christians under the Koman emperors pale 
before this long era of penalty and blood. The Irish, by numer- 
ous decrees of English kings and parliaments, were deprived of 
every thing which a man not guilty of crime has a right to enjoy. 
Land, citizenship, the right of education, of acquiring property, 
of living on their own soil — every thing was denied them, and 
death in every form was decreed, in every line of the new Prot- 
estant code, to men, women, and even children, whose only crime, 
consisted in remaining faithful to their religion. 

But chiefly during the Cromwellian war and the nine years 
of the Protector's reign were they doomed to absolute, unrelent- 
ing destruction. IS'ever has any thing in the whole history of 
mankind equalled it in horror, unless the devastation of Asia 
and Eastern Europe under Zengis and Timour. 

There is, therefore, at the bottom of the Irish character, hid- 
den under an appearance of light-headedness, mutability of feel- 
ing — ^nay, at times, futility and even childishness — -a depth of 



X 



XX PREFACE. 

perseverance, constancy, and true heroism, unequalled by any 
other nation of modern times. 

And this it is which has preserved to them that intense spirit 
of nationality, so strong after every means had been adopted to 
crush it out. The hundred years which followed the penal code 
were an age of gloom for them. They were mere slaves, and 
seemed to have lost all courage, all desire even of improving 
their condition. After so many heroic struggles, they appeared 
to surrender all claim, not only to independence, but to a con- 
dition barely supportable. They were forgotten by Europe, and 
might have been considered as wiped out of existence. Who at 
that time would have dreamed of their resurrection at any future 
day? 

Yet they lived. They had, it is true, only one token of na- 
tionality, but this was enough to preserve unquenehed the sacred 
fire of true patriotism : they had the wooden altars of their glens, 
of their morasses, of their mountain-fastnesses ; they had a few 
hunted priests officiating for them in the darkness of the night, 
beneath the canopy of heaven, or in the gloom of forests. There, 
before a rude crucifix, they knelt, one standing sentinel on some 
projecting rock, or at the entrance of the woods, to give the alarm 
if he saw the "wolf" coming to devour them. 

This alone saved them as a nation, and prepared the era of 
their success which is now nearly complete. For, have they not 
at last obtained almost all they ever fought for ? Have they not 
at last freedom of religion, freedom of education, the full right of 
acquiring property, some political' influence, liberty of speaking 
aloud to their would-be oppressors, and of calling on Europe to 
witness the justice of their claims ? Are they not, perhaps, on 
the point of recovering " home rule ? " And how long will their 
soil remain in possession of absentee landlords, who take to them- 
selves the fat of the land, and abandon the inhabitants of the 
country to the periodical devastation of famine and the constant 
degradation of pauperism? 

Several attempts have been made to introduce among them 
the modern revolutionary spirit. A few individuals have been 
inoculated with it ; the mass of the people have remained intact, 
owing to their religious steadfastness, and to their intimate con- 
viction that the hierarchy of the Church and the priesthood are 
now, as ever, the true leaders of the people. May they continue 
firm in that holy conviction ! 

Hence, what is now passing in Ireland ought not to be con- 
sidered as having any thing to do with the general upheaval of 
European passions, and with the Continental convulsions of so- 
ciety. The object of the Irish has never been, and cannot now 
be, to shake the foundation-stones of the social fabric. They 
want to replace their national status on the basis of true order 



PEEFACE. xxi 

according to the eternal laws whicli God gave to mankind. 
N^otliing else is in their mind; they are pursuing no guilty 
and shadowy Utopia. "Who knows, then, whether their small 
island may not yet become the beacon-light which, guiding 
other nations, shall at a future day save Europe from the uni- 
versal shipwreck which threatens her? Tlie providential mis- 
sion of Ireland is far from being accomplished, and men may 
yet see that not in vain has she been tried so long in the cru- 
cible of affliction. 

Another part of the providential plan as affecting her will 
show itself, and excite our admiration, in the latter portion of 
the work we undertake. 

The Irish are no longer confined to the small island which 
gave them birth. From the beginning of their great woes, they 
have known the bitterness of exile. Their nobility were the first 
to leave in a body a land wherein they could no longer exist ; 
and, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they made 
the Irish name illustrious on all the battle-fields of Europe. At 
the same time, many of their priests and monks, unable longer to 
labor among their countrymen, spent their lives in the libraries 
of Italy, Belgium, and Spain, and gave to. the world those im- 
mense works so precious now to the antiquarian and historian. 
Every one knows what Montalembert, in particular, found in 
them. They may be said to have preserved the annals of their 
nation from total ruin ; and the names of the O'Clearys, of Ward 
and Wadding, of Colgan and Lynch, are becoming better known 
and appreciated every day, as their voluminous works are more 
studied and better understood. 

But much more remarkable still is the immense spread of the 
people itself during the present age, so fruitful in happy results 
for the Church of Christ and the good of mankind. We may say 
that the labors of the Irish missionaries during the seventh and 
eighth centuries are to-day eclipsed by the truly missionary work 
of a whole nation spread now over ISTorth America, the West In- 
dia Islands, the East Indies, and the wilds of Australia ; in a 
word, wherever the English language is spoken. "Whatever may 
have been the visible causes of that strange " exodus," there is 
an invisible cause clear enough to any one who meditates on the 
designs of God over his Church. There is no presumption in 
attributing to God liimself what could only come from Him. 
The catholicity of the Church was to be spread and preserved 
through and in all those vast regions colonized now by the 
adventurous English nation; and no better, no more simple 
way of effecting this could be conceived than the one whose 
workings we see in those colonies so distant from the mother- 
country. 

This, for the time being, is the chief providential mission of 



jfxii PREFAOE. 

Ireland, and it is truly a noble one, undertaken and executed in 
a noble manner by so many thousand's, nay millions, of men and 
women — poor, indeed, in worldly goods when they start on their 
career, but rich in faith ; and it is as true now as it has ever been 
from the beginning of Christianity, that hem est victoria nostra, 
fides vestra. 

These few words of our Preface wonld not suffice to prepare 
the reader for the high importance of this stupendous phenome- 
non. We purpose, therefore, devoting our second chapter to the 
subject, as a preparation for the very interesting details we shall 
furnish subsequently, as it is proper that, from the very threshold, 
an idea may be formed of the edifice, and of the entire propor- 
tions it is destined to assume. 

"We have so far sketched, as briefly as possible, what the fol- 
lowing pages will develop ; and the reader may now begin to 
understand what we said at starting, that no other nation in Eu- 
rope offers so interesting an object of study and reflection. 

Plato has said that the most meritorious spectacle in the eyes 
of God was that of " a just man struggling with adversity." 
What must it be when a whole nation, during nine long ages, 
offers to Heaven the most sublime virtues in the midst of the 
extremest trials ? Are not the great lessons which such a con- 
test presents worthy of study and admiration ? 

We purpose studying them, although we cannot pretend to 
render full justice to such a theme. And, returning for a mo- 
• ment to the considerations with which we started, we can truly 
say that, in the whole range of modern history, it would be diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to find a national life to compare with 
that of poor, despised Ireland. E"either do we pretend to write 
the history itself; our object is more humble: we merely pen 
some considerations suggested naturally by the facts which we 
suppose to be already known, with the purpose of arriving at a 
true appreciation of the character of the people. For it is the 
people itself we study ; the reader will meet with comparatively 
few individual names. 

We shall find, moreover, that the nation has never varied. 
Its history is an unbroken series of the same heroic facts, the 
same terrible misfortunes. The actors change continually ; the 
outward circumstances at every moment present new aspects, so 
that the interest never flags ; but the spirit of the struggle is ever 
the same, and the latest descendants of the first O'JNeills and 
O'Donnells burn with the same sacred fire, and are inspired by 
the same heroic aspirations, as their fathers. 

Happily, the gloom is at length lighted up by returning day. 
The contest has lost its ferocity, and we are no longer sur- 
rounded by the deadly shade which obscured the sky a hundred 
years ago. Then it was hard to believe that the nation could 



PREFACE. ^^^ 



ever rise ; her final success seemed almost an impossibility. We 
now see that those who then despaired sinned against Provi- 
dence, which waited for its own time to arrive and vindicate its 
ways. And it is chiefly on account of the bright hope which 
begins to dawn that our subject should possess for all a lively in- 
terest, and fill the Catholic heart with glowing svmnathv and 
ardent thankfulness to God. & J f j ^ 



TABLE OF OOISTTEI^TS. 



Pagb 
Ohaptee I. The Celtic Eace ■ . . . . 1 

11. The World tinder the Lead of European Eaces. — ^Mission 

of the Irish Eace in the Mpvement .... 39 

-^ III. The Irish better prepared to receive Christianity than 

other Nations 60 

IV. How the Irish received Christianity . . . . 84 

V. The Christian Irish and the Pagan Danes . . . . 106 

YL The Irish Free-Clans and Anglo-ISTorman Feudalism . 133 

YII. Ireland separated from Europe. — A Triple Episode . . 159 

YIII. The Irish and the Tudors.— Henry VIII. . . .176 

IX. The Irish and the Tudors. — ^Elizabeth. — The Undaunted 

Nobility.— The Suffering Church . . . .204 

X. England prepared for the Eeception of Protestantism — 

Ireland not . 229 

XI. The Irish and the Stuarts. — ^Loyalty and Confiscation . 257 

XII. A Century of Gloom.— The Penal Laws . . . 292 

XIII. Eesurrection. — ^Delusive Hopes 827 

XIV. Eesurrection. — ^Emigration 374 

XV> The "Exodus" and its Effects . . . . , . .425 

XVI. Moral Force all-suflBcient for the Eesurrection of Ireland 485 



THE IRISH RACE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE CELTIC RACE. 



Nations whicli preserve, as it were, a perpetual youth, slionld 
be studied from their origin, JSTever having totally changed, 
some of their present features may be recognized at the very 
cradle of their existence, and the strangeness of the fact sets out 
in bolder relief their actual peculiarities. Hence we consider it 
to our purpose to examine the Celtic race first, as we may know 
it from ancient records : What it was ; what it did ; what were 
its distinctive features ; what its manners and chief characteris- 
tics. A strong light will thus be thrown even on the Irish of 
our own days. Our words must necessarily be few on so exten- 
sive a subject ; but, few as they are, they will not be unimpor- 
tant in our investigations. 

In all the works of God, side by side with the general order 
resulting from seemingly symmetric laws, an astonishing variety 
of details everywhere shows itself, producing on the mind of man 
the idea of infinity, as eflectually as the wonderful aspect of a 
seemingly boundless universe. This variety is visible, first in 
the heavenly bodies, as they are called ; star differing from star, 
planet from planet ; even the most minute asteroids never show- 
ing themselves to us two alike, but always offering differences in 
size, of form, of composition. 

This variety is visible to us chiefly on our globe ; in the in- 
finite multiplicity of its animal forms, in the wonderful insect 
tribes, and in the brilliant shells floating in the ocean ; visible 
also in the incredible number of trees, shrubs, herbs, down to 
the most minute vegetable organisms, spread with such reckless 
abundance on the surface of our dwelling ; visible, flnally, in 
the infinity of different shapes assumed by inorganic matter. 

But what is yet more wonderful and seemingly unaccountable 
is that, taking every species of being in particular, and looking 
1 



2 THE CELTIC RACE, 

at any two individuals of the same species, we would consider it 
an astonishing effect of chance, wei-e we to meet with two objects 
of our study perfectly alike. The mineralogist notices it, if he 
finds in the same groujD of crystals two altogether similar ; the 
botanist would express his astonishment if, on comparing two 
specimens of the same plant, he found no diiference between 
them. The same may be said of birds, of reptiles, of mammalia, 
of the same kind. A close observer will even easily detect dis- 
similarities between the double organs of the same person, be- 
tween the two eyes of his neighbor, the two hands of a friend, 
the two. feet of a stranger whom he meets. 

It is therefore but consistent with general analogy that in the 
moral as well as in the physical faculties of man, the same ever- 
recurring variety should appear, in the features of the face, in 
the shape of the limbs, in the moving of the muscles, as well as 
in the activity of thought, in the mobility of humor, in the com- 
bination of passions, propensities, sympathies, and aversions. 

But, at the same time, with all these peculiarities perceptible 
in individuals, men, when studied attentively, show themselves 
in groups, as it were, distinguished from other groups by peculi- 
arities of their own, which are generally called characteristics of 
race ; and although, according to various systems, these charac- 
teristics are made to expand or contract at will, to serve an a 
priori purpose, and sustain a preconcerted theory, yet there are, 
with respect to them, startling facts which no one can gainsay, 
and which are worthy of serious attention. 

Two of these facts may be stated in the following proposi- 
tions : 

I. At the cradle of a race or nation there must have been a 
type imprinted on its progenitor, and passing from him to all 
his posterity, which distinguishes it from all others. 

II. The character of a race once established, cannot be 
eradicated without an almost total disappearance of the people. 

The proofs of these propositions would rec[uire long details 
altogether foreign to our present purpose, as we are not writing 
on ethnology. We will take them for granted, as otherwise we 
may say that the whole history of man would be unintelligible. 
If, however, writers are found who apply to their notion of race 
all the inflexibility of physical laws, and who represent history 
as a rigid system of facts chained together by a kind of fatality ; 
if a school has sprung up among historians to do away with the 
moral responsibility of individuals and of nations, it is scarcely 
necessary to tell the reader that nothing is so far from our mind 
as to adopt ideas destructive, in fact, to all morality. 

It is our belief that there is no more " necessity " in the 
leanings of race with respect to nations, than there is in the cor- 
rupt instincts of our fallen nature with respect to individuals. 



THE CELTIC EACE. 3 

The teachings of faith have clearly decided this in the latter 
case, and the consequence of this authoritative decision carries 
with it the determination of the former. 

According to the doctrine of St. Augustine, nations are re- 
warded or punished in this world, because there is no future ex- 
istence for them ; but the fact of rewards and punishments 
awarded them shows that their life is not a series of necessary 
sequences such as prevail in physics, and that the manifestations 
or phenomena of history, past, present, or future, cannot resolve 
themselves into the workings of absolute laws. 

Race, in our opinion, is only one of those mysterious forces 
which play upon the individual from the cradle to the grave, 
which affect alike all the members of the same family, and give 
it a peculiarity of its own, without, however, interfering in the 
least with the moral freedom of the individual ; and as in him 
there is free-will, so also in the family itself to which he belongs 
may God find cause for approval or disapproval. The heart of a 
Christian ought to be too full of gratitude and respect for Di- 
vine Providence to take any other view of history. 

It would be presumptuous on our part to attempt "an explana- 
tion of the object God proposed to himself in originating such 
a diversity in human society. We can only say that it appears 
He did not wish all mankind to be ever subject to the same rule, 
the same government and institutions. His Church alone was to -^ 
Vhear the character of universality. Outside of her, variety was 
to be the rule in human affairs as in all things else. A universal 
despotism was never to become possible. 

This at once explains why the posterity of Japhet is so differ- 
ent from that of Sem and of Cham. 

In each of those great primitive stocks, an all-wise Providence 
introduced a large number of sub-races, if we may be allowed to 
call them so, out of which are sprung the various nations whose 
intermingling forms the web of human history. Our obj-ect is to 
consider only the Celtic branch. For, whatever may be the 
various theories propounded on the subject of the colonization 
of Ireland, from whatever part of the globe the primitive inhabi- 
tants may be supposed to have come, one thing is certain, to-day 
the race is yet one, in spite of the foreign blood infused into it 
by so many men of other stocks. Although the race was at one 
time on the verge of extinction by Cromwell, it has finally ab- 
sorbed all the others ; it has conquered ; and, whoever has to deal 
with true Irishmen, feels at once that he deals with a primitive 
people, whose ancestors dwelt on the island thousands of years 
ago. Some slight differences may be observed in the people of the 
various provinces of the island ; there may be various dialects in 
their language, different appearance in their looks, some slight 
divergence in their disposition or manners ; it cannot be other- 



4. THE CELTIC EACE. 

wise, since, as we have seen, no two individuals of tlie human 
family can be found perfectly alike. But, in spite of all this, 
they remain Celts to this day ; they belong undoubtedly to that 
stock formerly wide-spread throughout Europe, and now almost 
confined to their island ; for the character of the same race in 
Wales, Scotland, and Brittany, has not been, and could not be, 
kept so pure as in Erin ; so that in our age the inhabitants of 
those countries have become more and more fused with their 
British and Gallic neighbors. 

We must, therefore, at the beginning of this investigation, 
state briefly what we know of the Celtic race in ancient times, 
and examine whether the Irish of to-day do not reproduce its 
chief characteristics. 

We do not propose, however, in the present study, referring 
to the physical peculiarities of the Celtic tribes ; we do not 
know what those were two or three thousand years ago. We 
must confine ourselves to moral propensities and to manners, and 
for this view of the subject we have sufiicient materials whereon 
to draw. 

We first remark in this race an immense power of expansion, 
when not checked by truly insurmountable obstacles ; a power 
of expansion which did not necessitate for its workings an unin- 
habited and wild territory, but which could show its energy and 
make its force felt in the midst of already thickly-settled regions, 
and among adverse and warlike nations. 

As far as history can carry as back, the whole of Western 
Europe, namely, Gaul, a part of Spain, E'orthern Italy, and what 
we call to-day the British Isles, are found to be peopled by a race 
apparently of the same origin, divided into an immense number 
of small republics ; governed patriarchally in the form of clans, 
called by Julius Csesar, " Civitates." The Greeks called them 
Celts, " Keltai." They do not appear to have adopted a common 
name for themselves, as the idea of what we call nationality 
would never seem to have occurred to them. Tet the name of 
Gaels in the British Isles, and of Gauls in France and ISTorthern 
Italy, seems identical, l^ot only did they fill the large expanse 
of territory we have mentioned, but they multiplied so fast, that 
they were compelled to send out armed colonies in every direc- 
tion, set as they were in the midst of thickly-peopled regions. 

We possess few details of their first invasion of Spain ; but 
Boman history has made us all acquainted with their valor. It 
was in the first days of the Bepublic that an army of Gauls took 
possession of Eome, and the names of Manlius and Camillus are 
no better known in history than that of Brenn, called by Livy, 
Brennus. His celebrated answer, " Yse victis," will live as 
long as the world. 

Later on, in the second centurv before Christ, we see another 



THE CELTIC EACE. 5 

army of Celts starting from Pannonia, on tlie Danube, wliere 
tliey had previously settled, to invade Greece. Another Brenn 
is at the head of it. Macedonia and Albania were soon con- 
quered ; and, it is said, some of the peculiarities of the race may 
still be remarked in many Albanians. . Thessaly could not resist 
the impetuosity of the invaders ; the Thermopylae were occupied 
by Gallic battalions, and that celebrated defile, where three hun- 
dred Spartans once detained the whole army of Xerxes, could 
offer no obstacle to Celtic bravery. Hellas, sacred Hellas, came 
then under the power of the Gauls, and the Temple of Delphi 
was already in sight of Brenn and his warriors, when, according 
to Greek historians, a violent earthquake, the work of the of- 
fended gods, threw confusion into the Celtic ranks, which were 
subsequently easily defeated and destroyed by the Greeks, 

A branch of this army of the Delphic Brenn had separated 
from the main body on the frontiers of Thrace, taken pos- 
session of Byzantium, the future Constantinople, and, crossing 
the straits, established itself in the heart of Asia Minor, and 
there founded the state of Galatia, or Gallo-Greece, which so 
long bore their name, and for several centuries influenced the 
affairs of Asia and of the whole Orient, where they established a 
social state congenial to their tastes and customs. But the 
Romans soon after invading Asia Minor, the twelve clannish re- 
publics formerly founded were, according to Strabo, first reduced 
to three, then to two, until finally Julius Csesar made Dejotar 
king of the whole country. 

The Celts could not easily brook such a change of social rela- 
tions ; but, unable to cope against Roman power, they came, as 
usual, to wrangle among themselves. The majority pronounced 
for another chieftain, named Bogitar, and succeeded in forming 
a party in Borne in his favor. Clodius, in an assembly of the 
Roman people, obtained a decree confirmatory of his authority, 
and he took possession of Pessinuntum, and of the celebrated 
Temple of Cybele. 

The history of this branch of the Celts, nevertheless, did 
not close with the evil fortunes of their last king. According 
to Justinus, they swarmed all over Asia. Having lost their 
autonomy as a nation, they became, as it were, the Swiss merce- 
naries of the whole Orient. Egypt, Syria, Pontus, called them 
to their defence. " Such," says Justinus, " was the terror ex- 
cited by their name, and the constant success of their undertak- 
ings, that no king on his throne thought himself secure, and no 
fallen prince imagined himself able to recover his power, except 
with the help of the ever-ready Celts of those countries." 

This short sketch sufiices to show their power of exT3ansion 
in ancient times among thickly-settled populations When we 
have shown, farther on, how to-day they are spreading all over 



6 THE CELTIC EACE. 

the world, not looking to wild and desert countries, but to large 
centres of population in the English colonies, we shall be able to 
convince ourselves that they still present the same characteristics. 
If they do not bear arms in their hands, it is owing to altered 
circumstances ; but their actual exj3ansion bears a close resem- 
blance to that of ancient times, and the similarity of effect shows 
the similarity of character. 

"We pass now to a new feature in the race, which has not, to 
our knowledge, been suflQciently dwelt upon. All their migra- 
tions in old times were across continents ; and if, occasionally, 
they crossed the Mediterranean Sea, they did so always in for- 
eign vessels. 

The Celtic race, as we have seen, occupied the whole of 
Western Europe. They had, thersfore, numerous harbors on the 
Atlantic, and some excellent ones on the Mediterranean. Many 
passed the greater portion of their lives on the sea, supporting 
themselves by fishing ; yet they never thought of constructing 
and arming large fleets ; they never fought at sea in vessels of 
their own, with the single exception of the naval battle between 
Julius Csesar and the Veneti, off the coast of Armorica, where, 
in one day, the Eoman general destroyed the only maritime 
armament which the Celts ever possessed. 

And even this fact is not an exception^ to the general rule ; 
for M. de Penhouet, the greatest antiquarian, perhaps, in Celtic 
lore in Brittany, has proved that the Yeneti of Western Gaul 
were not really Celts, but rather a colony of Carthaginians, the 
only one probably remaining, in the time of Csesar, of those once 
numerous foreign colonies of the old enemies of Kome. 

Still this strange anomaly, an anomaly which is observable in 
no other people living on an extensive coast, was not produced 
by ignorance of the uses and importance of large fleets. From 
the ^rst they held constant intercourse with the great navigators 
of antiquity. The Celtic harbors teemed with the craft of hardy 
seamen, who came from Phoenicia, Carthage, and finally from 
Kome, Heeren, in his researches on the Phoenicians, proves it 
for that very early age, and mentions the strange fact that the 
name of Ireland with them was the " Holy Isle." For several 
centuries, the Carthaginians, in particular, used the harbors of 
Spain, of Gaul, even of Erin and Britain, as their own. The 
Celtic inhabitants of those countries allowed them to settle peace- 
ably among them, to trade with them, to use their cities as em- 
poriums, to call them, in fact, Carthaginian harbors, although 
that African nation never, really colonized the country, does not 
appear to have made war on the inhabitants in order to occupy 
it, except in a few instances, when thwarted, probably, in their 
commercial enterprises ; but they always lived on peaceful terms 
with the aborigines, whom they benefited by their trade, and, 



THE CELTIC RACE. 7 

doubtless, enlightened by the narrative of tbeir expeditions in 
distant lands. 

Is it not a strikingly strange fact that, under sucli circum- 
stances, tlie Celts should never have thought of possessing ves- 
sels of their own, if not to push the enterprises of an extensive 
commerce, for which they never showed the slightest inclina- 
tion, at least for the purpose of shipping their colonies abroad, 
and crossing directly to Greece from Celtiberia, for instance, or 
from their Italian colony of the Yeneti, replaced in modern 
times by maritime Yenice? Yet so it was ; and the great classic 
scholar, Heeren, in his learned researches on the Phoenicians and 
Carthaginians, remarks it with surprise. The chief reason 
which he assigns for the success of those southern navigators 
from Carthage in establishing their colonies everywhere, is the 
fact of no people in' Spain, Gaul, or the British Isles, possessing 
at the time a navy of their own ; and, finding it so surprising, 
he does not attempt to explain it, as indeed it really remains 
without any possible explanation, save the lack of inclination 
springing from the natural promptings of the race. 

What renders it more surprising still is, that individually 
they had no aversion to a seafaring life ; not only many of them 
subsisted by fishing, but their curragTis covered the sea all along 
their extensive coasts. They could pass from island to island in 
their small craft. Thus the Celts of Erin frequently crossed 
over to Scotland, to the Hebrides, from rock to rock, and in 
Christian times they went as far as the Faroe group, even as far 
as Iceland, which some of them appear to have attempted to 
colonize long before the Norwegian outlaws went there; and 
some even say that from Erin came the first Europeans who 
landed on frozen Greenland years before the Icelandic I^Torthmen 
planted establishments in that dreary country. The Celts, there- 
fore, and those of Erin chiefly, were a seafaring race. ' 

]3ut to construct a fleet, to provision and arm it, to fill it with 
the flower of their youth, and send them over the ocean to plun- 
der and slay the inhabitants for the purpose of colonizing the 
countries they had previously devastated, such was never the 
character of the Celts. They never engaged extensively in 
trade, or what is often synonymous, piracy. Before becoming 
christianized, the Celts of Ireland crossed over the narrow chan- 
nel which divided them from Britain, and frequently carried 
home slaves ; they also passed occasionally to Armorica, and 
their annals speak of warlike expeditions to that country ; but 
their eftbrts at navigation were always on an extremely limited 
scale, in spite of the many inducements offered by their geo- 
graphical i^osition. The fact is striking when we compare them 
in that particular with the Scandinavian free-rovers of the ISTorth- 
ern Ocean. . 



8 THE CELTIC EACE. 

It is, therefore, very remarkable that, whenever they got on 
board a boat, it was always a single and open vessel. They did 
so in pagan times, when the largest portion of Western Europe 
was theirs; they continued to do so after they became Chris- 
tians. The race has always appeared opposed to the operations 
of an extensive commerce, and to the spreading of their power 
by large fleets. 

The ancient annals of Ireland speak, indeed, of naval expedi- 
tions ; but these expeditions were always undertaken by a few 
^ persons in one, two, or, at most, three boats, as that of the sons 
of Ua Corra ; and such facts consequently strengthen our view. 
The only fact which seems contradictory is supposed to have oc- 
curred during the Danish wars, when Callaghan, King of Cashel, 
is said to have been caught in an ambush, and conveyed a cap- 
tive by the Danes, .first to Dublin, then to Armagh, and finally 
to Dundalk. 

The troops of Kennedy, son of Lorcan, are said to have been 
supported by a fleet of fifty sail, commanded by Falvey Finn, a 
Kerry chieftain. We need not repeat -the story so well known 
to all readers of Irish history. But this fact is found only in the 
work of Keating, and the best critics accept it merely as an his- 
torical romance, which Keating thought propei; to insert in his 
history. Still, even supposing the truth of the story, all that we 
may conclude from it is that the seafaring Danes, at the end of 
their long wars, had taught the Irish to use the sea as a battle- 
field, to the extent of undertaking a small expedition in order to 
liberate a beloved chieftain. 

It is very remarkable, also, that according to the annals of 
Ireland, the naval expeditions nearly always bore a religious 
character, never one of trade or barter, with the exception of the 
tale of Brescan, who was swallowed up with his fifty curraghs, 
in which he traded between Ireland and Scotland. 

^Nearly all the other maritime excursions are voyages under- 
taken with a Christian or Godlike object. Thus our holy re- 
ligion was carried over to Scotland and the Hebrides by Co- 
lunibkill and his brother monks, who evangelized those nu- 
merous groups of small islands. Crossing in their skifiJs, and 
planting the cross on some far-seen rock or promontory, they 
perched their monastic cells on the bold bluffs overlooking the 
ocean. 

'No more was the warrior on carnage bent to be seen on the 
seaboards of' Ulster or the western coast of Albania, as Scotland 
was then called ; only unarmed men dressed in humble monastic 
garb trod those wave-beaten shores. At early morning they left 
the cove of their convent ; they spread their single sail, and plied 
their well-worn oars, crossing from Colombsay to lona, or from 
the harbor of Bano-or to the nearest shore of the Isle of Man. 



THE CELTIC RACE. 9 

At noon they may have met a brother in the middle of the strait 
in his shell of a boat, bouncing over the water toward the point 
they had left. And the holy sign of the cross passed from one 
monk to the other, and the word of benison was carried through 
the air, forward and back, and the heaven above was propitious, 
and the wave below was obedient, while the hearts of the two 
brothers were softened by holy feelings ; and nothing in the air 
around, on the dimly-visible shores, on the surface of the heav- 
ing waves, was seen or heard save what might raise the soul to 
heaven and the heart to God. 

In concluding this portion of our subject, we will merely 
refer to the fact that neither the Celts of Gaul or Britain, nor 
those of Ireland, ever opposed an organized fleet to the numer- 
ous hostile naval armaments by which their country was in- 
vaded. When the Roman fleet, commanded by Caesar, landed 
in Great Britain, when the innumerable Danish expeditions at- 
tacked Ireland, whenever the Anglo-ISTormans arrived in the 
island during the four hundred years of the colony of the Pale, 
we never hear of a Celtic fleet opposed to the invaders. Italian, 
Spanish, and Trench fleets came in oftentimes to the help of the 
Irish ; yet never do we read that the island had a single vessel 
to join the friendly expedition. We may safely conclude, then, 
that the race has never felt any inclination for sending large ex- 
peditions to sea, whether for extensive trading, or for political 
and warlike purposes. They have always used the vessels of 
other nations, and it is no surprise, therefore, to find them now 
crowding English ships in their migrations to colonize other 
countries. It is one of the propensities of the race. 

A third feature of Celtic character and mind now attracts- 
our attention, namely, a peculiar literature, art, music, and 
poetry, wherein their very soul is portrayed, and which belongs 
exclusively to them. Some very interesting considerations will 
naturally flow from this short investigation. It is the study of 
the constitution of the Celtic mind. 

In Celtic countries literature was the perfect expression of 
the social state of the people. Literature must naturally be so 
everywhere, but it was most emphatically so among the Celts. 
With them it became a state institution, totally unknown to 
other nations. Literature and art sprang naturally from the 
clan system, and consequently adopted a form not to be found 
elsewhere. Being, moreover, of an entirely traditional cast, 
those pursuits imparted to their minds a steady, conservative, 
traditional spirit, which has resulted in the happiest conse- 
quences for the race, preserving it from theoretical vagaries, and 
holding it aloof, even in our days, from the aberrations which 
all men now deplore in other European nations, and whose 
effects we behold in the anarchy of thought. This last consid- 



10 THE CELTIC RACE. 

eration adds to this portion of our subject a peculiar and ab- 
sorbing interest. 

The knowledge wliicli Julius Csesar possessed of tlie Druids 
and of their literary system was very incomplete ; yet he pre- 
sents to his readers a truly grand spectacle, when he speaks of 
their numerous schools, frequented by an immense number of 
the youths of the country, so different from those of Eome, in 
which his own mind had been trained — " Ad has magnus adoles- 
centium numerus disciplinse causa concurrit:" when he men- 
tions the political and civil subjects submitted to the judgment 
of literary men — " de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque 
constituunt. . . . Si de hereditate, si de finibus controversia est, 
iidem decernunt : " when he states the length of their studies — 
" annos nonnuUi vicenos in disciplina permanent : " when he 
finally draws a short sketch of their course of instruction — " mul- 
ta de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundi ac terrarum magni- 
tudine, .... disputant juventutique tradunt." 

But, unfortunately, the great author of the " Commentaries ''' 
had not sufficiently studied the social state of the Celts in Gaul 
and Britain ; he never mentions the clan institution, even when 
he speaks of the feuds — factiones — which invariably split their 
septs — civitates — into hostile parties. In his eleventh chapter, 
when describing the contentions which were constantly rife in 
the cities, villages, even single houses, when remarking the con- 
tinual shifting of the supreme authority from the Edui to the 
Sequani, and reciprocally, he seems to be giving in a few phrases 
the long history of the Irish Celts ; yet he does not appear to, 
be aware of the cause of this universal agitation, namely, the 
clan system, of which he does not say a single world. How 
could he have perceived the effect of that system on their litera- 
ture and art ? 

To understand it at once it suffices to describe in a few words 
the various branches of studies pursued by their learned men ; 
and, as we are best acquainted with that portion of the subject 
which concerns Ireland, we will confine ourselves to it. There 
is no doubt the other agglomerations of Celtic tribes, the Gauls 
chiefly, enjoyed institutions very similar, if not perfectly alike. 

The highest generic name for a learned man or doctor was 
" oUamh.'' These ollamhs formed a kind of order in the race, 
and the privileges bestowed on them were most extensive. 
" Each one of them was allowed a standing income of twenty- 
one cows and their grasses," in the chieftain's territory, besides 
ample refections for himself and his attendants, to the number 
of twenty-four, including his subordinate tutors, his advanced 
pupils, and his retinue of servants. He was entitled to have 
two hounds and six horses, . . . and the privilege of conferring 
a temporary sanctuary from injury or arrest by carrying his 



THE CELTIC KACE. H 

wand, or liaving it carried around or over tlie person or place to 
be protected. His wife also enjoyed certain other valuable privi- 
leges. — (Prof. E. Curry, Lecture I.) 

But to reacb that degree he was to prove for himself, purity 
of learning, purity of mouth (from satire), purity of hand (from 
bloodshed), purity of union (in marriage), purity of honesty 
(from theft), and purity of body (having but one wife). 

With the Celts, therefore, learning constituted a kind of 
priesthood. These were his moral qualifications. His scientific 
attainments require a little longer consideration, as they form 
the chief object we have in view. 

They may at the outset be stated in a few words. The 
ollamh was." a man.who had arrived at the highest degree of 
historical learning, and of general literary attainments. He 
should be an adept in royal synchronisms, should know the 
boundaries of all the provinces and chieftaincies, and should be 
able to trace the genealogies of all the tribes of Erin up to the 
first man.— ^(Prof. Curry, Lecture X.) 

Cassar had already told us of the Druids, " Si de hereditate, 
si de finibus controversia est iidem decernunt." In this passage 
he gives us a glimpse of a system which he had not studied 
sufficiently to embrace in its entirety. 

The qualifications of an ollamh which we have just enumer- 
ated, that is to say, of the highest doctor in Celtic countries, 
already prove how their literature grew out of the clan system. 

The clan system, of which we shall subsequently speak more 
at length, rested entirely on history, genealogy, and topography. 
The authority and rights of the monarch of the whole country, 
of the so-called kings of the various provinces, of the other chief- 
tains in their several degrees, finally, of all the individuals who 
composed the nation connected by blood with the chieftains and 
kings, depended entirely on their various genealogies, out of 
which grew a complete system of general and personal history. 
The conflicting rights of the septs demanded also a thorough 
knowledge of topography for the adjustment of their difficulties. 
Hence the importance to the whole nation of accuracy in these 
matters, and of a competent authority to decide on all such 
questions. 

But in Celtic countries, more than in all others, topography 
was connected with general history, as each river or lake, moun- 
tain or hill, tower or hamlet, had received a name from some 
historical fact recorded in the public annals ; so that even now the 
geographical etymologies frequently throw a sudden and decisive 
light on disputed points of ancient history. So far, this cannot 
be called a literature ; it might be classed under the name of 
statistics, or antiquarian lore ; and if their history consisted 
merely of what is contained in the old annals of the race, it 



12 THE CELTIC RACE. 

would be presumptuous to make a particular allusion to their 
literature, and make it one of the , chief characteristics of the 
race. The annals, in fact, were mere chronological and syn- 
chronic tables of previous events. 

But an immense number of books were written by many of 
their authors on each particular event interesting to each Celtic 
tribe : and even now many of those special facts recorded in 
these books owe their origin to some assertion or hint given in 
the annals. There is no doubt that long ago their learned men 
were fully acquainted with all the points of reference which 
escape the modern antiquarian. History for them, therefore, 
was very different from what the Greeks and Eomans have made 
it in the models they left us, which we have copied or imitated. 

It is only in their detached " historical tales " that they dis- 
play any skill in description or narration, any remarkable pict- 
ures of character, manners, and local traditions ; and it seems 
that in many points they show themselves masters of this beauti- 
ful art. 

Thus they had stories of battles, of voyages, of invasions, of 
destructions, of slaughters, of sieges, of tragedies and deaths, of 
courtships, of military expeditions ; and all this strictly histori- 
cal. For we do not here speak of their " imaginative tales," 
which give still freer scope to fancy ; such as the Fenian and 
Ossianic poems, which are also founded on facts, but can no more 
claim the title of history than the novels of Scott or Cooper. 

The number of those books was so great that the authentic 
list of them far surpasses in length what has been preserved of 
the old Greek and Latin writers. It is true that they have all 
been saved and transmitted to us by Christian Irishmen of the 
centuries intervening between the sixth and sixteenth ; but it is 
also perfectly true that Avhatever was handed down to us by Irish 
monks and friars came to them from the genuine source, the 
primitive authors, as our own monks of the "West have preserved 
to us all we know of Greek and Latin authors. 

So that the question so long decided in the negative, whether 
the Irish knew handwriting prior to the Christian era and the 
coming of St. Patrick, is no longer a question, now that so much 
is known of their early literature. St. Patrick and his brother 
monks brought with them the Roman characters and the knowl- 
edge of numerous Christian writers who had preceded him ; but 
he could not teach them what had happened in the country be- 
fore his time, events which form the subject-matter of their an- 
nals, historical and imaginative tales and poems. For the Chris- 
tian authors of Ireland subsequently to transmit those facts to 
us, they must evidently have copied them from older books, 
which have since perished. 

Prof. E. Curry thinks that the Ogham characters, so often 



THE CELTIC EACE. 13 

mentioned in the most ancient Irish books, were used in Erin 
long before the introduction of Christianity there. And he 
strengthens his opinion by proofs which it is difficult to con- 
tradict. Those characters are even now to be seen in some of 
the oldest books wliich have been preserved, as well as on many 
stone monuments, the remote antiquity of which cannot be de- 
nied. One well-authenticated fact suffices, however, to set the 
question at rest : " It is quite certain," says E. Curry, " that the 
Irish Druids and poets had written books before the coming of 
St. Patrick in 433 ; since we find that veky statement in the 
ancient Gaelic Tripartite life of the Saint, as well as in the 
" Annotations of Tirechan " preserved in the Book of Armagh, 
which were taken by him (Tirechan) from the lips and books of 
his tutor, St. Mochta, who was the pupil and disciple of St. 
Patrick himself." 

What Caesar, then, states of the Druids, that they committed 
every thing to memory and used no books, is not strictly true. 
It must have been true only with regard to their mode of teach- 
ing, in that they gave no books to their pupils, but confined 
themselves to oral instruction. 

The order of Ollamh comprised various sub-orders of learned 
men. And the first of these deserving our attention is the class 
of " Seanchaidhe," pronounced Shanaehy. The ollamh seems to 
have been the historian of the monarch of the whole country ; 
the shanaehy had the care of provincial records. Each chief- 
tain, in fact, down to tlie humblest, had an officer of this descrip- 
tion, who enjoyed privileges inferior only to those of the ollamh, 
and partook of emoluments graduated according to his useful- 
ness in the state ; so that we can already obtain some idea of the 
honor and respect paid to the national literature and traditions 
in the person of those who were looked upon in ancient times 
as their guardians from age to age. 

The shanachies were also bound to prove for themselves the 
moral qualifications of the ollamhs.' 

A shanaehy of any degree, who did not preserve these 
" purities," lost half his income and dignity, according to law, 
and was subject to heavy penalties besides. 

According to McEirbis, in his book of genealogies, " the histo- 
rians were so anxious and ardent to preserve the history of Erin, 
that the description they have left us of the nobleness and digni- 
fied manners of the people, should not be wondered at, since 

* " Purity of hand, bright without wounding, 
Purity of mouth, without poisonous satire, 
Purity of learning, without reproach, 
Purity of husbandship, in marriage." 
Many of these details and the following are chiefly derived from Prof. E. Curry. 
— (Early Irish Manuscripts.) 



14 THE CELTIC RACE. 

they did not refrain from writing even of tlie undignified arti- 
sans, and of the professors of the healing and building arts ■ of 
ancient times — as shall be shown below, to prove the fidelity of 
the historians, and the errors of those who make such assertions, 
as, for instance, that there were no stone buildings in Erin be- 
fore the coming of the Danes and Anglo-l!*[ormans. 

" Thus saith an ancient authority : ' The first doctor, the first 
builder, and the first fisherman, that were ever in Erin were — 

Capa, for the healing of the sick, 
In his time was all-powerful ; 
And Luasad, the cunning builder, 
And Laighne, the fisherman.' " 

So speaks McEirbis in his quaint and picturesque style. 

The literature of the Celts was, therefore, impressed with the 
character of realistic universality, which has been the great boast 
of the romantic school. It did not concern itself merely with 
the great and powerful, but comprised all classes of people, and 
tried to elevate what is of itself undignified and common in hu- 
man society. This is no doubt the meaning of the quotation 
just cited. 

Among the Celts, then, each clan had his historian to record 
the most minute details of every-day history, as well as every 
fact of importance to the whole clan, and even to the nation at 
large ; and thus we may see how literature with them grew 
naturally out of their social system. The same may not appear 
to hold good at first sight with the other classes of literary men ; 
yet it would be easy to discover the link connecting them all, 
and which was always traditional or matter-of-fact, if we may 
use that expression. 

The next sub-oedek was that of Eile, which is generally trans- 
lated poet, but its meaning also involves the idea of philosophy 
or wisdom added to that of poetry. 

The File among the Celts was, after all, only an historian 
writing in verse ; for all their poetry resolved itself into annals, 
" poetic narratives " of great events, or finally " ballads." 

' It is well known that among all nations poetry has preceded 
prose ; and the first writers that appeared anywhere always wrote 
•in verse. It seems, therefore, that in Celtic tribes the order of 
Eile was anterior in point of time to that of Shanachy, and that 
both must have sprung naturally from the same social system. 
Hence the monarch of the whole nation had his poets, as also 
the provincial kings and every minor chieftain. 

In course of time their number increased to such an extent 
in Ireland, that at last they became a nuisance to be abated. 

" It is said that in the days of Connor Mcll^assa — several cen- 



THE CELTIC KACE. 15 

tnries before Christ — there met once 1,200 poets in one com- 
pany ; another time 1,000, and another 700, namely, in the 
days of Aedh McAinmire and Colnmcille, in the sixth century 
after our Saviour. And between these periods Erin always 
thought that she had more of learned men than she wanted ; so 
that from their numbers and the tax their support imposed upon 
the public, it was attempted to banish them out of Erin on three 
different occasions ; but they were detained by the Ultonians for 
hospitality's sake. This is evident from the Amhra Columcille 
(panegyric of St. Columba). He was the last that kept them in 
Ireland, and distributed a poet to every territory, and a poet to 
every king, in order to lighten the burden of the people in gen- 
eral. So that there were people in their following, contemporary 
with every generation to preserve the history and events of the 
country at this time. Not these alone, but the kings, and saints, 
and churches of Erin preserved their history in like manner." 

From this curious passage of McEirbis, it is clear that the 
Celtic poets proposed to themselves the same object as the histo- 
rians did ; only that they wrote in verse, and no doubt allowed 
themselves more freedom of fancy, without altering the facts 
which were to them of paramount importance. 

McEirbis, in the previous passage, gives us a succinct account 
of the action of Columbkill in regard to the poets or bards of his 
time. But we know many other interesting facts connected 
with this event, which must be considered as one of the most 
important in Ireland during the sixth century. The order 
of poets or bards was a social and political institution, reach- 
ing back in point of time to the birth of the nation, enjoying 
extensive privileges, and without which Celtic life would have 
been deprived of its warmth and buoyancy. Yet Aed, the 
monarch of all Ireland, was inclined to abolish the whole order, 
and banish, or even outlaw, all its members. Being unable to do 
it of his own authority, he thought of having the measure car- 
ried in the assembly of Drumceit, convened for the chief pur- 
pose of settling peacefully the relations of Ireland with the Dal- 
riadan colony established in Western Scotland a hundred years 
before. Columba came from lona in behalf of Aidan, whom he 
had crowned a short time previously as King of Albania or 
Scotland. It seems that the bards or poets were accused of in- 
solence, rapacity, and of selling their services to princes and 
nobles, instead of calling them to account for their misdeeds. 

Columba openly undertook their defence in the general as- 
sembly of the nation. Himself a poet, he loved their art, and 
could not consent to see his native country deprived of it. Such 
a deprivation in his eyes would almost have seemed a sacrilege. 

" He represented," says Montalembert, " that care must be 
taken not to pull up the good corn with the tares, that the gen- 



16 THE CELTIC EACE. 

eral exile of the poets would be the death of a venerable an- 
tiquity, and of that poetry so dear to the country, and so useful 
to those who knew how to employ it. The king and assembly 
yielded at length, under condition that the number should be 
limited, and their profession laid under certain rules." 

Dalian Fergall, the chief of the corporation, composed his 
" Amhra," or Praise of Columbkill, as a mark of gratitude from 
the whole order. That the works of Celtic poets possessed real 
literary merit, we have the authority of Spenser for believing. 
The author of the " Faerie Queene " was not the friend of the 
Irish, whom he assisted in plundering and destroying under 
Elizabeth. He could only judge of their books from English 
translations, not being sufficiently acquainted with the language 
to understand its niceties. Yet he had to acknowledge that their 
poems " savoured of sweet wit and good invention, but skilled not 
of the goodly ornaments of poetry ; yet were they sprinkled 
with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good 
grace and comeliness to them." 

He objected, it is true, to the patriotism of their verse, and 
pretended that they " seldom choose the doings of good men for 
the argument of their poems," and became " dangerous and des- 
perate in disobedience and rebellious daring." But this accusa- 
tion is high praise in our eyes, as showing that the Irish bards 
of Spenser's time praised and glorified those who proved most 
courageous in resisting English invasion, and stood firmly on 
the side of their race against the power of a great queen. 

A poet, it seems, required twelve years of study to be master 
of his art. One-third of that time was devoted to practising the 
" Teinim Laegha," by which he obtained the power of under- 
standing every thing that it was proper for him to speak of or to 
say. The next third was employed in learning the " Imas Foros- 
nadh," by which he was enabled to communicate thoroughly his 
knowledge to other pupils. Finally, the last three years were 
occupied in " Dichedal," or improvisation, so as to be able to 
speak in verse on all subjects of his study at a moment's notice. 

There were, it appears, seven kinds of verse ; and the poet 
was bound to possess a critical knowledge of them, so as to be a 
judge of his art, and to pronounce on the compositions submitted 
to him. 

If called upon by any king or chieftain, he was required to 
relate instantly, seven times fifty stories, namely, five times fifty 
prime stories, and twice fifty secondary stories. 

The prime stories were destructions and preyings, courtships, 
battles, navigations, tragedies or deaths, expeditions, elopements, 
and conflagrations. 

All those literary compositions were historic tales ; and they 
were not composed for mere amusement, but possessed in the 



THE CELTIC EACE. 17 

eyes of learned men a real authority in point of fact. If fancy 
was permitted to adorn them, the facts themselves were to 
remain unaltered with their chief cii'cumstances. Hence the 
writers of the various annals of Ireland do not scruple to quote 
many poems or other tales as authority for the facts of history 
which they relate. 

And such also was heroic poetry among the Greeks. The 
Hellenic philosophers, historians, and geographers of later times 
always quoted Homer and Hesiod as authorities for the facts they 
related in their scientific works. The whole first book of the 
geography of Strabo, one of the most statistical and positive 
works of antiquity, has for its object the vindication of the 
geography of Homer, whom Strabo seems to have considered as 
a reliable authority on almost every possible subject. 

Our limits forbid us to speak more in detail of Celtic histo- 
rians and poets. We have said enough to show that both had 
important state duties to perform in the social system of the 
country, and, while keeping within due bounds, they were es- 
teemed by all as men of great weight and use to the nation. 
Besides the field of genealogy and history allotted to them to cul- 
tivate, their very office tended to promote the love of virtue, and 
to check immorality and vice. They were careful to watch over 
the acts and inclinations of their princes and chieftains, seldom 
failing to brand them with infamy if guilty of crimes, or crown 
them with honor when they had deserved well of the nation. In 
ancient Egypt the priests judged the kings after their demise ; 
in Celtic countries they dared to tell them the truth during their 
lifetime. And this exercised a most salutary effect on the peo- 
ple ; for perhaps never in any other country did the admiration 
for learning, elevation of feeling, and ardent love of justice and 
right, prevail as in Ireland, at least while enjoying its native in- 
stitutions and government. 

From many of the previous details, the reader will easily see 
that the literature of the Celts presented features peculiar to their 
race, and which supposed a mental constitution seldom found 
among others. If, in general, the world of letters gives ex]3res- 
sion in some degree to social wants and habits, among the Celts 
this expression was complete, and argued a peculiar bent of mind 
given entirely to traditional lore, and never to philosophical 
speculations and subtlety. We see in it two elements remark- 
able for their distinctness. First, an extraordinary, fondness for 
facts and traditions, growing out of the patriarchal origin of so- 
ciety among them ; and from this fondness their mind received 
a particular tendency which was averse to theories and Utopias. 
All things resolved themselves into facts, and they seldom wan- 
dered away into the fields of conjectural conclusions. Hence 
their extraordinary adaptation to the truths of the Christian re- 
3 



18 THE CELTIC EACE. 

ligion, wliose dogmas are all supernatural facts, at once human 
and divine. Hence have they ever been kept free from that 
strange mental activity of otlier European races, which has led 
them into doubt, unbelief, skepticism, until, in our days, there 
seem to be no longer any fixed principles as a substratum for 
religious and social doctrines. 

Secondly, we see in the Celtic race a rare and unique outburst 
of fancy, so well expressed in the " Senchus Mor^'' their great law 
compilation, wherein it is related, that when St. Patrick had com- 
pleted the digest of the laws of the Gael in Ireland, Dubtach, 
who was a bard as well as a brelion, " put a thread of poetry 
round it." Poetry everywhere, even in a law-book; poetry 
inseparable from their thoughts, their speech, their every-day ac- 
tions ; poetry became for them a reality, an indispensable neces- 
sity of life. This feature is also certainly characteristic of the 
Celtic nature. 

Hence their literature was inseparable from art ; and music 
and design gushed naturally from the deepest springs of their 
souls. 

Music has always been the handmaid of Poetry ; and in our 
modern languages, even, which are so artificial and removed 
from primitive enthusiasm and naturalness, no composer of 
opera would consent to adapt his inspirations to a prose libretto. 
It was far more so in primitive times ; and it maybe said that in 
those days poetry was never composed unless to be sung or 
played on instruments. But what has never been seen elsewhere, 
what Plato dreamed, without ever hoping to see realized, music 
in Celtic countries became really a state institution, and singers 
and harpers were necessary officers of princes and kings. 

That all Celtic tribes were fond of it and cultivated it thor- 
oughly we have the assertion of all ancient writers who spoke of 
them. According to Strabo, the third order of Druids was com- 
posed of those whom he calls JJmnetai {vfxv7]Tai). "Wliat were 
their instruments is not mentioned; and we can now form no 
opinion of their former musical taste from the rude melodies of 
the Armoricans, "Welsh, and Scotch. 

From time immemorial the Irish Celts possessed the harp. 
Some authors have denied this ; and from the fact that the harp 
was unknown to the Greeks and Pomans, and that the Gauls 
of the time of Julius Csesar do not seem to have been ac- 
quainted with it, they conclude that it was not purely native to 
any of the British islands. 

But modern researches have proved that it was certainly used in 
Erin under the first successors of Ugaine Mor, who was monarch 
• — Ard-Pigh — about the year 633 before Christ, according to the 
annajs of the Four Masters. The story of Labhraid, which seems 
perfectly authentic, turns altogether on the perfection with which 



THE CELTIC EACE. 19 

Craftine played on the harp. From, that tmie, at least, the 
instrument became among the Celts of Ireland a perpetual source 
of melody. 

To judge of their proficiency in its use, it is enough to know 
to what degree of perfection they had raised it. Mr. Beauford, 
in his ingenious and learned treatise on the music of Ireland, as 
cultivated by its bards, creates gennine astonishment by the dis- 
coveries into which his researches have led him. 

The extraordinary attention which they paid to expression 
and effect brought about successive improvements in the harp, 
which at last made it far superior to the Grecian lyre. To make 
it capable of supporting the human voice in their symphonies, 
they filled up the intervals of the fifths and thirds in each scale, 
and increased the number of strings from eighteen to twenty- 
eight, retaining all the original chromatic tones, but reducing the 
capacity of the instrument ; for, instead of commencing in the 
lower E in the bass, it commenced in C, a sixth above, and ter- 
minated in G in the octave below ; and, in consequence, the in- 
strument became much more melodious and capable of accom- 
panying the human voice. Malachi O'Morgair, Archbishop of 
Armagh, introduced other improvements in it in the twelfth cen- 
tury. Finally, in later times, its capacity was increased from 
twenty-eight strings to thirty-three, in which state it still re- 
mains. 

As long as the nation retained its autonomy, the harp was a 
nniversal instrument among the inhabitants of Erin. It was 
found in every house ; it was heard wherever you met a few peo- 
ple gathered together. Studied so universally, so completely and 
perfectly, it gave Irish music in the middle ages a superiority 
over that of all other nations. It is Cambrensis Avho remarks 
that " the attention of these people to musical instruments is 
worthy of praise, in which their skill is, beyond comparison, su- 
perior to any other people ; for in these the modulation is not 
slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, but the 
sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet sweet and pleasing. It is 
extraordinary, in such rapidity of the fingers, how the musical pro- 
portions are preserved, and the art everywhere inherent among 
their complicated modulations, and the multitude of intricate 
notes so sweetly swift, so irregular in their composition, so dis- 
orderly in their concords, yet returning to unison and complet- 
ing the melody." 

Giraldus could not express himself better, never before having 
heard any other music than that of the Anglo-ISTormans ; but it is 
clear, from the foregoing passage, that Irish art surpassed all his 
conceptions. 

The universality of song among the Irish Celts grew out of 
their nature, and in time brought out all the refinements of art. 



20 THE CELTIC EACE. 

Long before CamLrensis's time the whole island resounded with 
music and mirtli, and the king-archbishop, Cormac McCullinan, 
could not better express his gratitude to his Thomond subjects 
than by exclaiming — 

" .May our truest fidelity ever be given 
To the brave and generous clansmen of Tal ; 
And forever royalty rest with their tribe, 
And virtue and valor, and music and song ! " 

Long before Cormac, we find the same mirthful glee in the 
Celtic character expressed by a beautiful and well-known pas- 
sage in the life of St. Bridget : Being yet an unknown girl, she 
entered, by chance, the dwelling of some provincial king, who 
was at the time absent, and, getting hold of a harp, her fingers 
ran over the chords, and her voice rose in song and glee, and the 
whole family of the royal children, excited by the joyful har- 
mony, surrounded her, immediately grew familiar with her, and 
treated her as an elder sister whom they might have known all 
their life ; so that the king, coming back, found all his house in 
an uproar, filled as it was with music and mirth. 

Thus the whole island remained during long ages. I*^ever in 
the whole history of man has the same been the case with any 
other nation. Plato, no doubt, in his dream of a i:epublie, had 
something of the kind in his mind, when he wished to constitute 
harmony as a social and political institution. But he little 
thought that, when he thus dreamed and wrote, or very shortly 
after, the very object of his speculation was already, or was soon 
to be, in actual existence in the most western isle of Europe. 

Before Columba's time even the Church had become recon- 
ciled to the bards and harpers ; and, according to a beautiful 
legend, Patrick himself had allowed Oisin, or Ossian, and his 
followers, to sing the praises of ancient heroes. But Columbkill 
completed the reconciliation of the religious spirit with the 
bardic influence. Music and poetry were thenceforth identified 
with ecclesiastical life. Monks and grave bishops played on the 
harp in the churches, and it is said that this strange spectacle 
surprised the first Norman invaders of L'eland. To use the 
words of Montalembert, so well adapted to our subject : " Irish 
poetry, Avhich was in the days of Patrick and Columba so power- 
ful and so popular, has long undergone, in the country of Ossian, 
the same fate as the religion of which these great saints were the 
apostles. Rooted, like it, in the heart of a conquered people, 
and like it proscribed and persecuted- with an unwearying vehe- 
mence, it has come ever forth anew from the bloody furrow in 
which it was supposed to be buried. The bards became the 
most powerful allies of patriotism, the most dauntless prophets 



THE CELTIC EACE. 21 

of independence, and also the favorite victims of the cruelty of 
spoilers and conquerors. They made music and poetry weapons 
and bulwarks against foreign oppression ; and the oppressors 
used them as they had used the priests and the nobles. A price 
was set upon their heads. But while the last scions of the royal 
and noble races, decimated or ruined in Ireland, departed to die 
out under a foreign sky, amid the miseries of exile, the succes- 
sor of the bards, the minstrel, whom nothing could tear from his 
native soil, was ^^ursued, tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or 
chained and slaughtered like the most dangerous of rebels. 

"In the annals of the atrocious legislation, directed by the 
English against the Irish people, as well before as after the 
Reformation, special penalties against the minstrels, bards, and 
rhymers, who sustained the lords and gentlemen, . . . are to be 
met with at every step. • ' 

" ISTevertheless, the harp has remained the emblem of Ireland, 
even in the official arms of the British Empire, and during all 
last century, the travelling harper, last and pitiful successor of the 
bards, protected by Columba, was always to be found at the side 
of the priest, to celebrate the holy mysteries of the proscribed 
worship. He never ceased to be received with tender respect 
under the thatched roof of the poor Irish peasant, whom he con- 
soled in his misery and oppression by the plaintive tenderness 
and solemn sweetness of the music of his fathers." 

Could any expression of ours set forth in stronger light the 
Celtic mind and heart as portrayed in those native elements of 
music and literature ? Could any thing more forcibly depict the 
real character of the race, materialized, as it were, in its exterior 
institutions ? We were right in saying that among no other race 
was what is generally a mere adornment to a nation, raised to 
the dignity of a social and political instrument as it was among 
the Celts. Hence it was impossible for persecution and oppres- 
sion to destroy it, and the Celtic nature to-day is still traditional, 
full of faith, and at the same time poetical and impulsive as when 
those great features of the race held full sway. 

Besides music, several other branches of art, particularly 
architecture, design, and calligraphy, are worthy our attention, 
presenting, as they do, features unseen anywhere else; and 
would enable us still better to understand the character of the 
Celtic race. But our limits require us to refrain from what 
might be thought redundant and unnecessary. 

We hasten, therefore, to consider another branch of our in- 
vestigation, one which might be esteemed paramount to all 
others, and by the consideration of which we might have begun 
this chapter, only that its importance will be better understood 
after what has been already said. It is a chief characteristic 
which grew so perfectly out of the Celtic mind and autitudes, 



22 THE CELTIC EAOE. 

that long centuries of most adverse circumstances, we may say, a 
whole host of contrary influences wfere unable to make the Celts 
entirely abandon it. We mean the clan system, which, as a 
system, indeed, has disappeared these three centuries ago, but 
which may be said to subsist still in the clan spirit, as ardent 
almost among them as ever. 

It is beyond doubt that the patriarchal government was the 
•first established among men. The father ruled the family. As 
long as he lived he was lawgiver, priest, master ; his power was 
acknowledged as absolute. His children, even after their mar- 
riage, remained to a certain extent subject to him. Yet each 
became in turn the head of a small state, ruled with the primi- 
tive simplicity of the first family. 

In the East, history shows us that the patriarchal government 
was succeeded immediately by an extensive and complete des- 
potism. Millions of men soon became the abject slaves of an 
irresponsible monarch. Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, appear at 
once in history as powerful states at the mercy of a despot 
whose will was law. 

But in other more favored lands the family was succeeded by 
the tribe, a simple development of the former, an agglomeration 
of men of the same blood, who could all trace their pedigree to 
the acknowledged head ; possessing, consequently, a chief of the 
same race, either hereditary or elective, according to variable 
rules always based on tradition. This was the case among the 
Jews, among the Arabs, with whom the system yet prevails ; 
even it seems primitively in Hindostan, where modern research 
has brought to light modes of holding property which suppose 
the same system. 

But especially was this the case among the Celts, where the 
system having subsisted up to recently, it can be better known 
in all its details. Indeed, their adherence to it, in spite of every 
obstacle that could oppose it, shows that it was natural to them, 
congenial to all their inclinations, the only system that could 
satisfy and make them happy ; consequently, a characteristic of 
the race. 

There was a time when the system we speak of ruled many 
a land, from the Western Irish Sea to the foot of the Caucasus. 
Everywhere within those limits it presented the same general 
features ; in Ireland alone has it been preserved in all its vigor 
until the beginning of the seventeenth century, so rooted was 
it in the Irish blood. Consequently it can be studied better 
there. What we say, therefore, will be chiefly derived from the 
study of Irish customs, although other Gaelic tribes will also 
ftirnish us with data for our observations. 

In countries ruled by the clan system, the territory was di- 
vided among the clans, each of them occupying a particular dis- 



THE CELTIC RACE. 23 

trict, wliicli was seldom enlarged or diminislied. This is seen 
])articnlarly in Palestine, in ancient Ganl, in the British islands. 
Hence their hostile encounters had always for object movable 
plunder of any kind, chiefly cattle ; never conquest nor annexa- 
tion of territory. The word " preying," which is generally used 
for their expeditions, explains their nature at once. It was only 
in the event of the extinction of a clan that the topography was 
altered, and frequently a general repartition of land among 
neighboring tribes took place. 

It is true, when a surplus population compelled them to send 
abroad, swarms of their youth, that the conquest of a foreign 
country became an absolute necessity. But, on such occasions 
it was outside of Celtic limits that they spread themselves, tak- 
ing possession of a territory not their own. They almost in- 
variably respected the land of other clans of the same race, even 
when most hostile to them ; exceptions to this rule are extreme- 
ly rare. It was thus that they sent large armies of their young 
men into l!^orthern Italy, along the Danube, into Grrecian Al- 
bania and Thrace, and finally into the very cei^tre of Asia 
Minor. The fixing of the geographical position of each tribe 
was, therefore, a rule among them ; and in this they differed 
from nomadic nations, such as the Tartars in Asia and even the 
North American Indians, whose hold on the land was too slight 
to offer any prolonged resistance to invaders. Hence the posi- 
tion of the Grallic owitates was definite, and, so to speak, im- 
movable, as we may see by consulting the ma|)S of ancient Gaul 
at any time anterior to its thorough conquest by the Bomans ; 
not so among the German tribes, whose positions on the maps 
must difter according to time. 

"We have already seen that so sacred were the limits of 
the clan districts, that one of the chief duties of oilamhs and 
shanachies was to know them and see them preserved. 

But if territory was defined in Celtic nations, the right of 
holding land differed in the case of the chieftain and the clans- 
man. The head of the tribe had a certain well-defined portion 
assigned to him in virtue of his office, and as long only as he 
held it ; the clansmen held the remainder in common, no par- 
ticular spot being assigned to any one of them. 

As far, therefore, as the holding of land was concerned, there 
were neither rich nor poor among the Celts ; the wealth of the 
best of them consisted of cattle, house furniture, money, jewelry, 
and other movable property. In the time of St. Columba, the 
owner of five cows was thought to be a very poor man, although 
he could send them to graze on any free land of his tribe. There 
is no doubt that the almost insurmountable difficulty of the land 
question at this time originated in the attachment of the people 
to the old system, which had not yet perished in their afiec- 



24 THE CELTIC EACE. 

tioiis ; and certainly many " agrarian ontrages," as they are 
called, have had their source in the traditions of a people once 
accustomed to move and act freely in a free territory. 

It is needless to call the attention of the reader to another 
consequence of that state of things, namely, the persistence of 
territorial possessions. As no individual among them could 
alienate his portion, no individual or family could absorb the ter- 
ritory to the exclusion of others ; no great landed aristocracy 
consequently could exist, and no part of the land could pass by 
purchase or in any other way to a different tribe or to an 
alien race. The force of arms sometimes produced temporary 
changes, nothing more. It is the same principle which has 
preserved the small Indian tribes still existing in Canada. Their 
" reservations," as they are called, having been legalized by the 
British Government at the time of the conquest from the French, 
the territory assigned to them would have remained in their 
occupancy forever in the midst of the ever-shifting possessions 
of the white race, had not the Ottawa Parliament lately " al- 
lowed" those' reservations to be divided among the families of 
the tribes, with power for each to dispose of its portion, a power 
which will soon banish them from the country of their an- 
cestors. 

The preceding observations do not conflict in the least with 
what is generally said of inheritance by " gavel kind," Avhereby 
the property was equally divided among the sons to the exclusion 
of the daughters ; as it is clear that the property to be thus di- 
vided was only movable and personal property. 

But after the land we must consider the fersons under the 
clan-system. Under this head we shall examine briefly : 

I. The political oflices, such as the dignities of Ard-Righ or 
supreme monarch, of the provincial kings, and of the subordinate 
chieftains. 

II. The state of the common people. 

III. The bondsmen or slaves. 

All literary or civil oflices, not political, were hereditary. 
Hence the professions of ollamh, shanachy, bard, brelion, phy- 
sician, passed from father to son — a very injudicious arrange- 
ment apparently, but it seems nevertheless to have worked well 
in Ireland. Strange to say, however, these various classes formed 
no castes as in Egypt or in India, because no one was pre- 
vented from embracing those professions, even when not born 
to them ; and, in the end, success in study was the only requisite 
for reaching the highest round of the literary or professional 
ladder, as in China. 

But a stranger and more dangerous feature of the system was 
that in political offices the dignities were hereditary as to the 
family, elective as to the person. Hence the title of Ard-Righ 



THE CELTIC EACE. 25 

or supreme monarcli did not necessarily pass to the eldest son of 
the former king, but another member of the same family might 
be elected to the office, and was even designated to it during the 
lifetime of the actual holder, thus becoming Tanist or heir-appa- 
rent. Every one sees at a glance the numberless disadvantages 
resulting from such an institution, and it must be said that most 
of the bloody crimes recorded in Irish history sprang from it. 

At first sight, the dignity of supreme monarch would almost 
seem to be a sinecure under the clan system, as the authority 
attached to it was extremely limited, and is generally compared 
in its relations to the subordinate kings, as that of metropolitan 
to suifragan bishops iu the Church. Nevertheless, all Celtic na- 
tions appear to have attached a great importance to it, and the real 
misfortunes of Ireland began when contention ran so high for 
the office that the people were divided in their supreme allegi- 
ance, and no Ard-Righ was acknowledged at the same time by 
aU ; which happened precisely at the period of the invasion under 
Strongbow. 

Some few facts lately brought to light in the vicissitudes of 
various branches of the Celtic family show at once how highly 
all Celts, wherever they might be settled, esteemed the dignity 
of supreme monarch. It existed, as we have said, in all Celtic 
countries, and consequently in Gaul ; and the passage in the 
" Commentaries " of Julius Csesar on the subject is too important 
to be entirely passed over. 

After having remarked in the eleventh chapter, " De Bello 
Gallico," lib. vi., that in Gaul the whole country, each city or 
clan, and every subdivision of it, even to single houses, presented 
the strange spectacle of two parties, " factiones," always in pres- 
ence of and opposed to each other, he says in Chapter XII. : 
— at the arrival of Csesar in Gaul the Eduans and the Sequa- 
nians were contending for the supreme authority — " The latter 
civitas — clan — namely, the Sequanians, being inferior in power 
— because from time immemorial the supreme authority had 
been vested in the Eduans — had called to its aid the Germans 
under Ariovist by the inducement of great advantages and prom- 
ises. xVfter many successful battles, in which the entire nobil- 
ity of the Eduan clan perished, the Sequanians acquired so much 
power that they rallied to themselves the greatest number of the 
allies of their rivals, obliged the Eduans to give as hostages the 
children of their nobles who had perished, to swear that they 
would not attempt any thing against their conquerors, and even 
took possession of a part of their territory, and thus obtained the 
supreme command of all Gaul." 

We see by this passage that there was a supremacy resting 
in the hands of some one, over the whole nation. The success- 
ful tribe had a chief to whom that supremacy belonged. Csesar, 



26 THE CELTIC EACE. 

it is true, does not speak of a monarch as of a person, but attrib- 
utes the power to the " civitas," the tribe. It is well known, 
however, that each tribe had a head, and that in Celtic countries 
the power was never vested in a body of men, assembly, com- 
mittee, or board, as we say in modern times, but in the chief- 
tain, whatever may have been his degree. 

The author of the " Commentaries " was a Roman in whose 
eyes the state was every thing, the actual office-holder, dictator, 
consul, or prsetor, a mere instrument for a short time ; and he 
was too apt, like most of his countrymen, to jndge of other na- 
tions by his own. 

We may conclude from the passage quoted that there was a 
supreme monarch in Gaul as well as in Ireland, and modern 
historians of Gaul have acknowledged it. 

But there is yet a stranger fact, which absolutely cannot be 
explained, save on the supposition that the Celts everywhere 
held the supreme dignity of extreme if not absolute importance 
in their political system. 

To give it the preeminence it deserves, we must refer to a 
subsequent event in the history of the Celts in Britain, since it 
happened there several centuries after Csesar, and we will quote 
. the words of Augustin Thierry, who relates it : 

" After the retreat of the legions, recalled to Italy to protect 
the centre of the empire and Kome itself against the invasion 
of the Goths, the Britons ceased to acknowledge the power of 
the foreign/ governors set over their provinces and cities. The 
forms, the onices, the very spirit and language of the Roman ad- 
ministration disappeared; in their place was reconstituted the 
traditional authority of the clannish chieftains formerly abolished 
by Roman power. Ancient genealogies carefully preserved by 
the poets, called in the British language hcdrdd — bards — ^helped 
to discover those who could pretend to the dignity of chieftains 
of tribes or families, tribe and family being synonymous in their 
language ; and the ties of relationship formed the basis of their 
social state. Men of the lowest class, among that people, pre- 
served in memory the long line of their ancestry with a care 
scarcely known to other nations, among the highest lords and 
princes. All the British Celts, poor or rich, had to establish 
their genealogy in order fully to enjoy their civil rights and se- 
cure their claim of property in the territory of the tribe. The 
whole belonging to a primitive family, no one could lay any 
claim to the soil, unless his relationship was well established. 

" At the top of this social order, composing a federation of 
small hereditary sovereignties, the Britons, freed from Roman 
power, constituted a high national sovereignty ; they created a 
chieftain of chieftains, in their tongue called Penteyrn, that is 
to say, a hing of the whole, in the language of their old annals, 



THE CELTIC EACE. 27 

and they made him elective. — It was also formerly the custom 
in Gaul. — The object was to introduce into their system a kind 
of centralization, which, however, was al^vavs loose among 
Celtic tribes." — {Conquete de VAngleterre, liv. i.) 

It is evident to us that if the Britons constituted a supreme 
power, when freed from the Koman yoke, it was only because 
they had possessed it before they became subject to that yoke. 
It is, therefore, safe to conclude that there was a supreme mon- 
arch in Britain and in Gaul as well as in Ireland ; and since the 
Britons, after having lost for several centuries their autonomy of 
government, thought of reestablishing this supreme authority as 
soon as they were free to do so, it is clear that they attached a 
real importance to it, and that it entered as an essential element 
into the social fabric. 

But what in reality was the authority of the Ard-Eigh in 
Ireland, of the Penteyrn in Britain, of the supreme chief in 
Gaul, whose name, as usual, is not mentioned by Csesar? 

First, it is to be remarked that a certain extent of territory 
was always under his immediate authority. Then, as far as we 
can gather from history, there was a reciprocity of obligations 
between the high power and the subordinate kings or chieftains, 
the former granting subsidies to the latter, who in turn paid 
tribute to support the munificence or military power of the for- 
mer. 

"We know from the Irish annals that the dignity of Ard-Righ 
was always sustained by alliances with some of the provincial 
kings, to secure the submission of others, and we have a hint of 
the same nature in the passage, already quoted, from Csesar, as 
also taking place in Gaul. 

We know also from the " Book of Rights " that the tributes 
and stipends consisted of bondsmen, silver shields, embroidered 
cloaks, cattle, weapons, corn, victuals, or any other contribution. 

The Ard-Eigh, moreover, convened the Feis, or general as- 
sembly of the nation, eveiy third year ; first at Tara, and after 
Tara was left to go to ruin in consequence of the curse of St. 
Ruadhan in the sixth century, wherever the supreme monarch 
established his residence. 

The order of succession to the supreme power was the weak- 
est point of the Irish constitution, and became the cause of by 
far the greatest portion of the nation's calamities. Theoretically 
the eldest son — some say the eldest relative — of the monarch 
succeeded him, when he had no blemish constituting a radical 
defect : the supreme power, however, alternating in two families. 
To secure the succession, the heir-apparent was always declared 
during the life of the supreme king ; but this constitutional ar- 
rangement caused, perhaps, more crimes and wars than any other 
social institution among the Celts. The truth is that, alter the 



28 JHE CELTIC EAOE. 

heir-apparent, sustained by some provincial king, supplanted tlie 
reigning monarcli, one of the provincial cliieftaius claimed the 
crown and succeeded to it by violence. 

Yet the general rule that the monarch was to belong to the 
race of Miledh was adhered to almost without exception. One 
hundred and eighteen sovereigns, according to the most accredited 
annals, governed the whole island from the Milesian conquest 
to St. Patrick in 432. Of these, sixty were of the family of Here- 
mon, settled in the northern part of the island ; twenty-nine of 
the posterity of Heber, settled in the south ; twenty-four of that 
of Ir ; three issued from Lugaid, the son of Ith. AH these were 
of the race of Miledh ; one only was a firholg, or plebeian, and 
one a woman. 

It is certainly very remarkable that for so long a time — nearly 
two thousand years, according to the best chronologists — Ireland 
Was ruled by princes of the same family. The fact is unparal- 
leled in history, and shows that the people were firmly attached 
to their constitution, such as it was. It extorted the admiration 
of Sir John Davies, the attorney-general of James I., and later 
of Lord Coke. 

The functions of the provincial kings of Ulster, Munster, 
Leinster, and Connaught, were in their several districts the same 
as those which the Ard-Eigh exercised over the whole country. 
They also had their feuds and alliances with the inferior chief- 
tains, and in peaceful times there was also a reciprocity of obli- 
gations between them. Presents were given by the superiors, 
tributes by the inferiors ; deliberations in assembly, mutual 
agreement for public defence, wars against a common enemy, 
produced among them traditional rules which were generally 
followed, or occasional dissensions. 

Sometimes a province had two kings, chiefly Munster, which 
was often divided into north and south. Each king had his 
heir-apparent, the same as the monarch. Indeed, every heredi- 
tary office had, besides its actual holder, its Tanist, with right of 
succession. Hence causes of division and feuds were needlessly 
multiplied ; yet all the Celtic tribes adhered tenaciously to all 
those institutions which appeared rooted in their very nature, and 
which contributed to foster the traditional spirit among them. 

Por these various offices and their inherent rights were all 
derived from the universally prevailing family or clannish dispo- 
sition. Genealogies and traditions ruled the whole, and gave, 
as we have seen, to their learned men a most important part 
and function in the social state ; and thus what the Greek and 
Latin authors, Julius Caesar principally, have told us of the Celtic 
Druids, is literally true of the ollamhs in their various degrees. 

But the clannish spirit chiefly showed itself in the authority 
and rights of every chieftain in his own territory. He was truly 



THE CELTIC EACE. 29 

the patriarcli of all under him, acknowledged as he was to be 
the head of the family, elected by all to that office at the death 
of his predecessor, after due consultation with the files and 
shanachies, to whom were intrusted the guardianship of the laws 
which governed the clan, and the preservation of the rights of all 
according to the strict order of their genealogies and the tra- 
ditional rules to be observed. 

The power of the chieftain was immense, although limited 
on every side by laws and customs. It was based on the deep 
affection of relationship which is so ardent in the Celtic nature. 
For all the clansmen were related by blood to the head of the 
tribe, and each one took a personal pride in the success of his 
undertakings. 'No feudal lord could ever expect from his vassals 
the like self-devotion ; for, in feudalism, the sense of honor, in 
clanship, family affection, was the chief moving power. 

In clanship the type was not an army, as in feudalism, but a 
family. Such a system, doubtless, gave rise to many incon- 
veniences. " The breaking up of all general authority," says the 
Yery Kev. Dean Butler (Introduction to Clyn's "Annals"), "and 
the multiplication of petty independent principalities, was an 
abuse incident on feudalism ; it was inherent in the very essence 
of the patriarchal or family system. It began, as feudalism 
ended, with small independent societies, each with its own sepa- 
rate centre of attraction, each clustering round the lord or the 
chief, and each rather repelling than attracting all similar socie- 
ties. Yet it was not without its advantages. If feudalism gave 
more strength to attack an enemy, clanship secured more happi- 
ness at home. The first implied only equality for the few, serf- 
dom or even slavery for the many ; the other gave a feeling of 
equality to all." 

It was, no doubt, this feeling of equality, joined to that of 
relationship, which not only secured more happiness for the Celt, 
but which so closely bound the nobility of the land to the infe- 
rior classes, and gave these latter so ardent an affection for their 
chieftains. Clanship, therefore, imparted a peculiar character 
to the whole race, and its effect was so lasting and seemingly 
ineradicable as to be seen in the nation to-day. 

Wherever feudalism previously prevailed, we remark at this 
time a fearful hatred existing between the two classes of the 
same nation ; and the great majority of modern revolutions had 
their origin in that terrible antagonism. The same never existed, 
and could not exist, in Celtic countries ; and if England, after a 
conflict of many centuries, had not finally succeeded in destroy- 
ing or exiling the entire nobility of Ireland, we should, doubtless, 
see to this very day that tender attachment between high and 
low, rich and poor, which existed in the island in former ages. 

This, therefore, not only imparted a peculiar character to the 



30 THE CELTIC EACE. 

people, but also gave to eacli subordinate chieftain an immense 
power over liis clan ; and it is doubtful if the whole history of 
the country can afford a single example of the clansmen refusing 
obedience to their chief, unless in the case of great criminals 
placed by their atrocities under the ban of society in former 
times, and under the ban of the Church, since the establishment 
of the Christian religion among them. 

The previous observations give us an insight into the state 
of the people in Celtic countries. Since, however, we know that 
slavery existed among them, we must consider a moment what 
kind of slavery it was, and how soon it disappeared without 
passing, as in the rest of Europe, through the ordeal of serfdom. 

At the outset, we cannot, as some have done, call slaves the 
conquered races and poor Milesians, who, according to the an- 
cient annals of Ireland, rose in insurrection and established a 
king of their own during what is supposed to be the first century 
of the Christian era. The attacotts, as they were called, were 
not slaves, but poor agriculturists obliged to pay heavy rents : 
their very name in the Celtic language means "rent-paying 
tribes or people." Their oppression never reached the degree 
of suffering under which the Irish small farmers of our days are 
groaning. For, according to history, they could in three years 
prepare from their surplus productions a great feast, to Avhich 
the monarch and all his chieftains, with their retinue, were in- 
vited, to be treacherously assassinated at the end of the banquet. 
The great plain of Magh Cro, now Moy Cru, near Knockma, in 
the county of Galway, was required for such a monster feast ; 
profusion of meats, delicacies, and drinks was, of course, a neces- 
sity for the entertainment of such a number of high-born and 
athletic guests, and the feast lasted nine days. Who can suppose 
that in our times the free cottiers of a whole province in Ireland, 
after supporting their families and paying their rent, could spare 
even in three years the money and means requisite to meet the 
demands of such an occasion ? But the simple enunciation of 
the fact proves at least that the attacotts were no slaves, but at 
most merely an inferior caste, deprived of many civil rights, and 
compelled to pay taxes on land, contrary to the universal custom 
of Celtic countries. 

Ceesar, it is true, pretends that real slavery existed among 
the Celts in Gaul. But a close examination of that short pas- 
sage in his " Commentaries," upon which this opinion is based, 
will prove to us that the slavery he mentions was a very differ- 
ent thing from that existing among all other nations of anti- 
quity. 

"All over Gaul," he says, "there are two classes of men who 
enjoy all the honors and social standing in the state — the Druids 
and the knights. The plebeians are looked upon almost as 



THE CELTIC RACE. 31 

slaves, having no share in public affairs. Many among them, 
loaded with debt, heavily taxed, or oi)pressed by the higher class, 
give themselves in servitude to the nobility, and then, in hos 
eadem omnia sunt jura quce dominis m servos, the nobles lord it 
over them as, with us, masters over their slaves." 

It is clear from this very passage that among the Celts no 
such servile class existed as among the Romans and other nations 
of antiquity. The plebeians, as Caesar calls them, that is to say, 
the simple clansmen, held no office in the state, were not sum- 
moned to the councils of the nation, and, on that account, were 
nobodies in the opinion of the writer. But the very name he 
gives them — -plebs — shows that they were no more real slaves 
than the Roman plebs. They exercised their functions in the 
state by the elections, and Caesar did not know they could reach 
public office by application to study, and by being ordained to 
the rank of file, or shanachy, or ]3rehon, in Ireland, at least : 
and this gave them a direct share in public affiiirs. 

He adds that debt, taxation, and oppression, obliged a great 
many to give themselves in servitude, and that then they were 
amono; the Celts what slaves were amone; the Romans. 

This assertion of C^sar requires some examination. That 
there were slaves among the Gaels, and particularly in Ireland, 
we know from several passages of old writers preserved in the 
various annuls of the country. St. Patrick himself was a slave 
there in his youth, and we learn from his history and other 
sources how slaves were generally procured, namely, by piratical 
expeditions to the coast of Britain or Graul. The Irish curraghs, 
in pagan times, started from the eastern or southern shores of 
the island, and, landing on the continent or on some British isle, 
they captured women, children, and even men, when the crew 
of the craft was strong enough to overcome them ; the captives 
were then taken to Ireland and sold there. They lost their 
rights, were reduced to the state of " chattels," and thus became 
real slaves. Among the presents made by a superior to an in- 
ferior chieftain are mentioned bondsmen and bondsmaids. We 
cannot be surprised at this, since the same thing took place 
among the most ancient • patriarchal tribes of the East, and the 
Bible has made us all acquainted with the male and female ser- 
vants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are also called bonds- 
men and bondswomen. Among the Celts, therefore, slaves were 
of two kinds : those stolen from foreign tribes, and those who 
had, as it were, sold themselves, in order to escape a heavier op- 
pression : these latter are the ones mentioned by Csesar. 

The number of the first class must always have been very 
small, at least in Ireland and Britain, since the piratical ex- 
cursions of the Celtic tribes inhabiting those countries were 
almost invariably undertaken in curraghs, which could only 



32 THE CELTIC EACE. 

bring a few of tliese unfortunate individuals from a foreign 
country. ' 

As to tlie otlier class, whatever CsBsar may say of their num- 
ber in Gaul, making it composed of the greatest part of the ple- 
beians or common clansmen, we have no doubt but that he was 
mistaken, and that the number of real slaves reduced to that 
state by their own act must have always been remarkably 
small. 

How could we otherwise account for the numerous armies 
levied by the Gaulish chieftains against the power of Rome, or 
by the British and Irish lords in their continual internecine 
wars ? The clansmen engaged in both cases were certainly free- 
men, fighting with the determination which freedom alone can 
give, and this consideration of itself suffices to show that the 
great mass of the Celtic tribes was never reduced to slavery or 
even to serfdom. 

Moreover, the whole drift of the Irish annals goes to prove 
that slavery never included any perceptible class of the Celtic 
population ; it always remained individual and domestic, never 
endangering the safety of the state, never tending to insurrec- 
tion and civil disorder, never requiring the vigilance nor even 
the care of the masters and lords. 

The story of Libran, recorded in the life of St, Columbkill, is 
so pertinent to our present purpose, and so well adapted to give 
us a true idea of what voluntary slavery was amon^ the Celtic 
tribes, that we will give it entire in the words o± Montalem- 
bert: 

" It was one day announced to Columba in lona that a stran- 
ger had just landed from Ireland, and Columba went to meet 
him in the house reserved for guests, to talk with him in private 
and question him as to his dwelling-place, his family, and the 
cause of his journey. The stranger told him that he had under- 
taken this painful voyage in order, under the monastic habit and 
in exile, to expiate his sins. Columba, desirous of trying the 
reality of his repentance, drew a most repulsive picture of the 
hardships and difficult obligations of the new life. ' I am ready,' 
said the stranger, ' to submit to the most cruel and humiliating 
conditions that thou canst command me.' And, after having 
made confession, he swore, still upon his knees, to accomplish 
all the requirements of penitence. ' It is well,' said the abbot : 
' now rise from thy knees, seat thyself, and listen. You must 
first do penance for seven years in the neighboring island of 
Tirce, after which I will see you again.' 'But,' said the penitent, 
still agitated by remorse, 'how can I expiate a perjury of which 
I have not yet spoken? Before I left my country I killed a poor 
man. I was about to suffer the punishment of death for that crime, 
and I was already in irons, when one of my relatives, who is 



THE CELTIC EACE. 33 

very rich, delivered me by paying the composition demanded. 
I swore that I would serve him all my life ; but, after some days 
of service, I abandoned him, and here I am notwithstanding my 
oath.' Upon this the saint added that he would only be admit- 
ted to the paschal communion after his seven years of penitence. 

" When these were completed, Columba, after having given 
him the communion with his own hand, sent him back to Ireland 
to his patron, carrying a sword with an ivory handle for his ran- 
som. The patron, however, moved by the entreaties of his wife, 
gave the penitent his pardon without ransom. ' Why should we 
accept the price sent us by the holy Columba? We are not 
worthy of it. The request of such an intercessor should be 
granted freely. His blessing will do more for us than any ran- 
som.' And immediately he detached the girdle from his waist, 
which was the ordinary form in Ireland for the manumission of 
captives or slaves. Columba had, besides, ordered his penitent 
to remain with his old father and mother until he had rendered 
to them the last services. This accomplished, his brothers let 
him go, saying, ' Far be it from us to detain a man who has labored 
seven years for the salvation of his soul with the holy Columba 1 ' 
He then returned to lona, bi'inging with him the sword which 
was to have been his ransom. ' Henceforward thou shalt be 
called Libran, for thou art free and emancipated from all ties,' 
said Columba ; and he immediately admitted him to take the 
monastic vows." 

Servitude, therefore, continued in Ireland after the establish- 
ment of Christianity ; but how different from the slavery of 
other European countries, which it took so many ages to de- 
stroy, and which had to pass through so many different stages 1 
Although we cannot know precisely when servitude was com- 
pletely abolished among the Celts, the total silence of the con- 
temporary annals on the subject justifies the belief that the 
Danes, on their first landing, found no real slaves in the coun- 
try ; and, if the Danes themselves oppressed the people wherever 
they established their power, they could not make a social insti- 
tution of slavery. It had never been more than a domestic 
arrangement ; it could not become a state affair, as among the 
nations of antiquity. 

In clannish tribes, therefore, and partictllarly among the 
Celts, the personal freedom of the lowest clansman was the 
rule, deprivation of individual liberty the exception. Hence the 
manners of the people were altogether free from the abject de- 
portment of slaves and villeins in other nations — a cringing 
disposition of the lower class toward their superiors, which con- 
tinues even to this day among the peasantry of Europe, and 
which patriarchal nations have never known. The Norman in- 
vaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century, were struck with the' 
3 



34 THE CELTIC RACE. 

easy freedom of manner and speech of tlie people, so different 
from that of the lower orders in feudal countries. They soon 
even came to like it ; and the supercilious followers of Strong- 
bow readily adopted the dress, the habits, the language, and the 
good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whom they found them- 
selves settled. 

And it is proper here to show what social dispositions and 
habits were the natural result of the clan system, so as to be- 
come characteristic of the race, and to endure forever, as long at 
least as the race itself. The artless family state of the sept natu- 
rally developed a peculiarly social feeling, much less complicated 
than in nations more artificially constituted, but of a much deep- 
er and more lasting character. In the very nature of the mind 
of those tribes there must have been a great simplicity of ideas, 
and on that account an extraordinary tenacity of belief and will. 
There is no complication and systematic combination of political, 
moral, and social views, but a few axioms of life adhered to with 
a most admirable energy ; and we therefore find a singleness of 
purpose, a unity of national and religious feeling, among all the 
individuals of the tribe. 

As nothing is complicated and systematized among them, the 
political system must be extremely simple, and based entirely on 
the family. And family ideas being as absolute as they are sim- 
ple, the political system also becomes absolute and lasting ; with- 
out improving, it is true, but also without the constant changes 
Avhich bring misery with revolution to thoughtful, reflective, and 
systematic nations. What a frightful amount of misfortunes has 
not logic, as it is called, brought upon the French ! It was in 
the name of logical and metaphysical principles that the fabric 
of society was destroyed a hundred years ago, to make room for 
what was then called a more rationally-constituted edifice ; but 
the new building is not yet finished, and God only knows when 
it will be I 

The few axioms lying at the base of the Celtic mind with 
respect to government are much preferable, because much more 
conducive to stability, and consequently to peace and order, 
whatever may have been the local agitation and temporary feuds 
and divisions. Hence we see the permanence of the supreme 
authority resting in one family among the Celts through so 
many ages, in spite of continual wrangling for that supreme 
power. Hence the permanence of territorial limits in spite of 
lasting feuds, although territory was not invested in any particu- 
lar inheriting family, but in a purely moral being called the clan 
or sept. 

As for the moral and social feelings in those tribes, they are 
not drawn coldly from the mind, and sternly imposed by the ex- 
ternal law, in the form of axioms and enactments, as was the case 



THE CELTIC KACE, 35 

cliiefly in Sparta, and as is still tlie case in the Chinese Empire 
to-day ; but they gush forth impetuously from impulsive and 
loving hearts, and spread like living waters which no artificially- 
cut stones can bank and confine, but which must expand freely 
in the land they fertilize. 

Deep aifeetion, then, is with them at the root of all moral 
and social feelings ; and as all those feelings, even the national 
and patriotic, are merged in real domestic sentiment, a great pu- 
rity of morals must exist among them, nothing being so condu- 
cive thereto as family aifeetion s. 

Above all, when those purely-natural dispositions are raised 
to the level of the supernatural ones by a divinely-inspired code, 
by the sublime elevation of Christian purity, then can there be 
found nothing on earth more lovely and admirable. Chastity is al- 
ways attractive to a pure heart ; patriarchal guilelessness becomes 
sacred even to the corrupt, if not altogether hardened, man. 

Of course we do not pretend that this happy state of things 
is without its exceptions ; that the light has no shadow, the 
beauty no occasional blemish. "We speak of the generality, or 
at least of the majority, of cases ; for perfection cannot belong 
to this world. 

Yet mysticism is entirely absent from such a moral and re- 
ligious state, on account, perhaps, of the paucity of ideas by 
which the heart is ruled, and perhaps also on account of the 
artless simplicity which characterizes every thing in primitively- 
constituted nations. And, wonderful to say, without any mysti- 
cism there is often among them a perfect holiness of life, adapt- 
ing itself to all circumstances, climates, and associations. The 
same heart of a young maiden is capable of embracing a married 
life or of devoting itself to religious celibacy ; and in either case 
the duties of each are performed with the most perfect simplicity 
and the highest sanctity. Hence, how often does a trifling cir- 
cumstance determine for her her whole subsequent life, and 
make her either the mother of a family or the devoted spouse of 
Christ ! Yet, the final determination once taken, the whole after- 
life seems to have been predetermined from infancy as though 
no other course could have been possible. 

There is no doubt that sensual corruption is particularly 
engendered by an artificial state of society, which necessarily 
fosters morbidity of imagination and nervous excitability. A 
primitive and patriarchal life, on the contrary, leads to modera- 
tion in all things, and repose of the senses. 

Herein is found the explanation of the eagerness with which 
the Celts everywhere, but particularly in Ireland, as soon as 
Christianity was preached to them, rushed to a life of perfection 
and continence. St. Patrick himself expressed his surprise, and 
showed, by several words in his " Confessio," that he was scarce- 



36 THE CELTIC EACE. 

ly prepared for it. " The sons of Irislimen," lie says, " and tlie 
daughters of their chieftains, warit to become monks and virgins 
of Christ." We know what a multitude of monasteries and 
nunneries sprang up all over the' island in the very days of the 
first apostle and of his immediate successors. Montalembert re- 
marks that, according to the most reliable and oldest documents, 
a religious house is scarcely mentioned which contained less than 
three thousand monks or nuns. It appeared to be a consecrated 
number ; and this took place immediately after the conversion 
of the island to Christianity, w^hile even still a great number 
were pagans. 

" There was particularly," says St. Patrick, " one blessed 
Irish girl, gentle born, most beautiful, already of a marriagable 
age, whom I had baptized. After a few days she came back and 
told me that a messenger of God had appeared to her, advis- 
ing her to become a virgin of Christ, and live united to God. 
Thanks be to the Almighty ! Six days after, she obtained, with 
the greatest joy and avidity, what she wished. The same must 
be said of all the virgins of God ; their parents — those remain- 
ing pagans, no doubt — instead of approving of it, persecute 
them, and load them with obloquy ; yet their nuinber increases 
constantly ; and, indeed, of all those that have been thus born 
to Christ, I cannot give the nuniber, besides those living in holy 
widowhood, and keeping continency in the midst of the world. 

" But those girls chiefly sufi'er most who are bound to ser- 
vice ; they are often subjected to terrors and threats — from pa- 
gan masters surely — yet they persevere. The Lord has given 
his holy grace of purity to those servant-girls ; the more they 
are tempted against chastity, the more able they show them- 
selves to keep it." 

Does not this passage, written by St. Patrick, describe pre- 
cisely what is now of every-day occurrence wherever the Irish 
emigrate ? The Celts, therefore, were evidently at the time of 
their conversion what they are now ; and it has been justly re- 
marked that, of all nations whose records have been kept in the 
history of the Catholic Church, they have been the only ones 
whose chieftains, princes, even kings, have shown themselves al- 
most as eager to become, not only Christians, but even monks 
and priests, as the last of their clansmen and vassals. Every- 
where else the lower orders chiefly have furnished the first fol- 
lowers of Christ, the rich and the great being few at the begin- 
ning, and forming only the excej^tion. 

The evident consequence of this well-attested fact is that the 
pagan Celts, even of the highest rank, generally led pure lives, 
and admired chastity. But there is something more. Morality 
rests on the sense of duty ; the deeper that sense is imprinted in 
the heart of man, the more man becomes truly moral and holy. 



THE OELTIO EACE. 37 

It can be almost demonstrated that scarcely any thing gives 
more solidity to the sense of duty than a simple and patriarchal 
life. Their views of morals being no more complicated than 
their views of any thing else ; being accustomed to reduce every 
thing of a spiritual, moral nature to a few feelings and axioms, 
as it were, but at the same time becoming strongly attached to 
them on account of the importance which every man naturally 
bestows on matters of that sort ; what among other nations forms 
a complicated code of morality more or less pure, more or less 
corrupt, for the nations of which we speak becomes compressed, 
so to speak, in a nutshell, and, the essence remaining always at 
the bottom, the idea of duty grows paramount in their minds 
and hearts, and every thing they do is illumined by that light of 
the human conscience, which, after all, is for each one of ns the 
voice of God. False issues do not distract their minds, and give 
a wrong bias to the conscience. Hence Celtic tribes, by their 
very nature, were strictly conscientious. 

So preeminently was this the case with them that spiritual 
things in their eyes became, as they truly are, real and substan- 
tial. Hence their religion was not an exterior thing only. On 
the contrary, exterior rites were in their eyes only symbolical, 
and mere emblems of the reality which they covered. 

It should, therefore, be no matter of surprise to us to find that 
for them religion has always been above all things ; that they have 
always sacrificed to it whatever is dear to man on earth. They 
all seem to feel as instinctively and deeply as the thoroughly cul- 
tivated and superior mind of Thomas More did, that eternal 
things are infinitely superior to whatever is temporal, and that a 
wise man ought to give up every thing rather than be faithless to 
his religion. 

Erom the previous remarks, we may conclude, with Mr. Mat- 
thew Arnold, who has applied his critical and appreciative mind 
to the study of the Celtic character, that " the Celtic genius has 
sentiment as its main basis, with love of beauty, charm, and 
spirituality for its excellence," but, he adds, " ineffectualness and 
self-will for its defects." On these last words we may be allowed 
to make a few concluding observations. 

If by " inefii'ectualness " is understood that, owing to their 
impulsive nature, the Celts often attempted more than they 
could accomplish, and thus failed; or that on many occasions of 
less import they changed their mind, and, after a slight eifort, 
did not persevere in an undertaking just begun, there is no 
doubt of the truth of the observation. But, if the celebrated 
writer meant to say that this defect of character always accom- 
panied the Celts in whatever they attempted, and that thus they 
were constantly foiled and never successful in any thing; or, 
still worse, that, owing to want of perseverance and of energy, 



38 THE CELTIC EACE. 

they too soon relaxed in their efforts, and that every enterprise 
and determination on their part' became "ineffectual" — we so 
far disagree with him that the main object of the following pages 
will be to contradict these positions, and to show by the history 
of the race, in Ireland at least, that, owing precisely to their 
" self-will," they were never xiltimately xmsuccessful in their as- 
pirations ; but that, on the contrary, they have always in the end 
effected what with their accustomed perseverance and self-will 
they have at all times stood for. At least this we hope will be- 
come evident, whenever they had a great object in view, and 
with respect to things to which they attached a real and para- 
mount importance. 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE WORLD rJSTDEE THE LEAD OF THE EUEOPEAN EACES. MISSION 

OF THE lEISH EACE IN THE MOVEMENT. 

" The old prophecies are being fulfilled ; Japliet takes pos- 
session of the tents of Sem." — (I)e Maistee, Zettre cm Comte 
d^Avaray.) 

The following considerations Avill at once demonstrate the 
importance and reality of the subject which we have undertaken 
to treat upon : 

It was at the second birth >of mankind, when the family of 
Koah, left alone after the flood, was to originate a new state of 
things, and in its posterity to take possession of all the conti- 
nents and islands of the globe, that the prophecy alluded to at 
the head of this chapter was uttered, to be afterward recorded 
by Moses, and preserved by the Hebrews and the Christians till 
the end of time. 

lu^Tever before has it been so near its accomplishment as we 
see it now ; and the great Joseph de Maistre was the first to 
point this out distinctly. Yet he did not intend to say that it is 
only in our times that Europe has been placed by Providence at 
the head of human afiairs ; he only meant that what the prophet 
saw and announced six thousand years ago seems now to be on 
the point of complete realization. 

It will be interesting to examine, first, in a general way, how 
the race of Japhet, to whom Europe was given as a dwelling- 
place, gradually crept more and more into prominence after hav- 
ing at the outset been cast into the shade by the posterity of the 
two other sons of Ifoah. 

The Asiatic and African races, the posterity of Sem and 
Cham, appear in our days destitute of all energy, and incapable 
not only of ruling over foreign races, but even of standing alone 
and escaping a foreign yoke. It has not been so from the be- 
ginning. There was a period of wonderful activity for them. 
Asia and Africa for many ages were in turn the respective 
centres of civilization and of human history ; and the material 



40 THE WORLD LED BY EUROPE. 

relics of tlieir former energy still astonish all European travel- 
lers who visit the Pyramids of Egypt, the obelisks and temples 
of I^ubia and Ethiopia, the immense stone structures of Arabia 
Petrsea and Persia, as well as the stupendous pagodas of Hin- 
dostan. How, under a burning sun, men of those now-despised 
races could raise structures so mighty and so vast in number ; 
how the ancestors of the now-wretched Copt, of the wandering 
Bedouin, of the effete Persian, of the dreamy Hindoo, could 
display such mental vigor and such physical endurance as the 
remains of their architectural skill and even of their literature 
plainly show, is a mystery which no one has hitherto attempted 
to solve. JSTothing in modern Europe, where such activity now 
prevails, can compare with what the Eastern and Southern races 
accomplished thousands of years ago. Ethiopia, now buried in 
sand and in sleep, was, according to Heeren, the most reliable 
observer of antiquity in our days, a land of immense commercial 
enterprise, and wonderful architectural skill and energy. In all 
probability Egypt received her civilization from this country ; 
and Homer sings of the renowned prosperity of the long-lived 
and happy Ethiopians. It is useless to repeat here what we have 
all learned in our youth of Babylon and Nineveh, in Mesopota- 
mia ; of Persepolis, in fertile arid blooming Iran ; of the now 
ruined mountain-cities of Idumsea and JSTorthern Arabia ; of 
Thebes and Memphis ; of Thadmor, in Syria ; of Balk and Sam- 
arcand, in Central Asia ; of the wonderful cities on the banks 
of- the Ganges and in the southern districts of the peninsula of 
Hindostan. 

That the ancestors of the miserable men who continue to 
exist in all those countries were able to raise fabrics which time 
seems powerless to destroy, while their descendants can scarcely 
erect huts for their habitation, which are buried under the sand 
at the first breath of the storm, is inexplicable, especially when 
we take into consideration the principles of the modern doctrine 
of human progress and the indefinite perfectibility of man. 

At the time when those Eastern and Southern nations flour- 
ished, the sons of Japhet had not yet taken a place in history. 
Silently and unnoticed they wandered from the cradle of man- 
kind ; and, if Scripture had not recorded their names, we should 
be at a loss to-day to reach back to the origin of European na- 
tions. Yet were they destined, according to prophecy, to be the 
future rulers of the world ; and their education for that high 
destiny was a rude and painful one, receiving as they did for their 
share of the globe its roughest portion : an uninterrupted forest 
covering all their domain from the central plateau which they 
had left to the shores of the northern and western ocean, their 
utmost limit. Many branches of that bold race — audax Japeti 
genus — fell into a state of barbarism, but a barbarism very differ- 



THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 41 

ent from that of tlie tribes of Oriental or Southern origin. "With 
them degradation was not final, as it seems to have been with 
some branches at least of the other stems. They were always 
reclaimable, always apt to receive education, and, after having 
existed for centuries in an almost savage state, they were capable 
of once more attaining the highest civilization. This the Scan- 
dinavian and German tribes have satisfactorily demonstrated. 

It may even be said that all • the branches of the stock of 
Japhet first fell from their original elevation and passed through 
real barbarism, to rise again by their own efibrts and occupy a 
prominent position on the stage of history ; and this fact has, 
no doubt, given rise to the fable of the primitive savage state of 
all men. 

That the theory is false is proved at once by the sudden 
emergence of all Eastern nations into splendor and strength with- 
out ever having had barbarous ancestors. But, when they fall, 
it seems to be forever; and it looks at least problematical 
whether "Western intercourse, and even the intermixture of West- 
ern blood, can reinvigorate the apathetic races of Asia. As to 
their rising of their own accord and assuming once again the lead 
of the world, no one can for a moment give a second thought to 
the realization of such a dream. 

But how and when did the races of Japhet appear first in 
history ? How and when did the Eastern races begin to fall be- 
hind their younger brethren ? 

A great deal has been written, and with a vast amount of 
dogmatism, concerning the Pelasgians and their colonizations 
ancl conquests on the shore and over the islands of the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. But nothing can be proved with certainty in regard 
to their origin and manners, their rise and fall. In fact, Eu- 
ropean history begins with that of Greece ; and the struggle be- 
tween Hellas and Persia is at once the brilliant introduction of 
the sons of Japhet on the stage of the world — the Trojan War 
being more than half fabulous. 

The campaigns of Alexander established the supremacy of 
the West ; and from that epoch the Oriental races begin to fall 
into that profound slumber wherein they still lie buried, and 
which the brilliant activit}^ of the Saracens and Moslems iDroke 
for a time — now, we must hope, passed away forever. 

The downfall of the far Orient was not, however, contempo- 
raneous with the supremacy of Greece over the East. The great 
peninsula of India^was still to show for many ages an astonishing 
activity under the successive sway of the Hindoos, the Patans, 
the Moguls, and the Sikhs. China also was to continue for a 
long time an immense and prosperous empire ; but the existence 
of both these countries was concentrated in themselves, so that 
the rest of the world felt no result from their internal afiritations. 



42 THE WORLD LED BY EUROPE. 

Life was gradually ebbing away in tlie great Mongolian family, 
and the silent beatings of the pulse' that indicated the slow freez- 
ing of their blood could neither be heard nor felt beyond their 
own territorial limits. 

ISTothing new in literature and the arts is visible among them 
after the appearance, on their western frontiers, of the sons of 
Japhet, led by the Macedonian hero. It now seems established 
that Sanscrit literature, the only, but really surprising proof of 
intellectual life in Hindostan, is anterior to that epoch. 

As to China, the great discoveries which in the hands of the 
European races have led to such wonderful results, the mariner's 
compass, the printing-press, gunpowder, paper, bank-notes, re- 
mained for the Chinese mere toys or without further improve- 
ments after their first discovery. It is not known when those 
great inventions first appeared among them. They had been in 
operation for ages before Marco Polo saw them in use, and scarcely 
understood them himself. Europeans were at that time so little 
prepared for the reception of those material instruments of civil- 
ization, that the publication of his travels only produced incre- 
dulity with regard to those mighty engines of good or evil. 

But those very proofs of Oriental ingenuity establish the fact 
of a point of suspension in mental activity among the nations 
which discovered them. Its exact date is unknown ; but every 
thing tends to prove that it took place long ages ago, and nothing 
is so well calculated to bring home to our minds the great fact 
which we are now trying to establish as the simple mention 
of the two following phenomena in the life of the most remote 
Eastern nations : 

The genius of the East was at one time able to produce liter- 
ary works of a philosophical and poetical character unsurpassed 
by those of any other nation. The most learned men of modern 
times in Europe, when they are in the position to become prac- 
tically acquainted with them, and peruse them in their original 
dialects, can scarcely find words to express their astonishment, in- 
timately conversant as they are with the masterpieces of Greece 
and Rome and of the most polite Christian nations. They find 
in Sanscrit poems and religious books models of every descrip- 
tion ; but they chiefly find in them an abundance, a freshness, a 
mental energy, which fill them with wonder ; yet all those high 
intellectual endowments have disappeared ages ago, no one knows 
how nor precisely when. It is clear that the nation which pro- 
duced them has fallen into a kind of unconscious stupor, which 
has been its mental condition ever since, and which to-day raises 
puny Europe to the stature of a giant before the fallen colossus. 

Again : many ages ago the Mongolian family in China in- 
vented many material processes which have been mainly the 
cause of the rise of Europe in our days. They were really the 



THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 43 

invention of the Chinese, who neither received them from nor 
communicated them to any other nation. Ages ago they became 
known to ns accidentally through their instrumentality ; but, 
as we were not at that time prepared for the adoption of such 
useful discoveries, their mention in a book then read all over 
Europe excited only ridicule and unbelief. As soon as the West- 
ern mind mastered them of itself, they became straightway of 
immense importance, and gave rise, we may say, to all that we 
call modern civilization. But in the hands of the Chinese they 
remained useless and unproductive, as they are to this day, al- 
though they may now see what we have done with them. Their 
mind, therefore, once active enough to invent mighty instru- 
ments of material progress, long ago became perfectly incapable 
of improving on its own invention, so that European vessels con- 
vey to their astonished sight what was originally theirs, but so 
improved and altered as to render the original utterly contempt- 
ible and ridiculous. And, what is stranger still, though they 
can compare their own rude implements with ours, and possess 
a most acute mind in what is materially useful, they cannot be 
brought to confess Western superiority. The advantage which 
they really possessed over us a thousand years ago is still a reality 
to their blind pride. 

But it is time to return to the epoch when the race of Japhet 
began to put forth its power. 

Roman intellectual and physical vigor was the first great 
force which gave Europe that preeminence she has never since 
lost ; and there was a moment in history when it seemed likely 
that a nation, or a city rather, was on the point of realizing the 
prophetic promise made to the sons of Koah. 

But an idolatrous nation could not receive that boon ; and 
the Roman sway affected very slightly the African and Asiatic 
nations, whatever its pretensions may have been. 

For, when Rome had subdued what she called Europe, Asia, 
and Africa — the whole globe — whenever she found that her em- 
pire did not reach the sea, she established there posts of armed 
men ; colonies were sent out and legions distributed along the 
line ; even in some places, as in Britain, walls were constructed, 
stretching across islands, if not along continents. WTiatever 
country had the happiness of being included between those 
limits belonged to " the city and the world " — U7'bi et orhi / be- 
yond was Cimmerian darkness in the North, or burning deserts 
in the South. Mankind had no right to exist outside of her 
sway ; and, if some roaming barbarians strayed over the inhos- 
pitable confines, they could not complain at having their exist- 
ence swept ofi* from the field of history, so unworthy were they 
of the name of men. Science itself, the science of those times, 
had to admit such ideas and dictate them to polished writers. 



44 THE WOELD LED BY EUEOPE. 

Hence, according to the greatest geographers, mankind conld 
exist neither in tropical nor in arctic regions ; and Strabo, divid- 
ing the globe into five zones, declared that only two of them 
were habitable. 

We now know how false were those assertions, and indeed how 
circmnscribed was the power of ancient Rome. She pretended 
to universal as well as to eternal dominion; but she deceived 
herself in both cases. Under her swny the races cf Japhet were 
not " to dwell in the tents of Sem." She was not worthy of 
accomplishing the great prophecy which is now under our con- 
sideration. 

It is, however, undoubtedly due to her that the children of 
Japhet became the dominant race of the globe, and the Eastern 
nations, once so active and so powerful, were overshadowed by 
her glorj^, and had already fallen into that slumber which seems 
eternal. 

Egypt was reduced so low that a victorious Koman general 
had only to appear on her borders to insure immediate submission. 

Syria and Mesopotamia were fast becoming the frightful des- 
erts they are to-day. Persia dared not move in the awful pres- 
ence of a few legions scattered along the Tigris ; and, if, later on, 
the Parthian kings made a successful resistance against Home, it 
was only owing to the abominable corruption of Poman society 
at the time ; but, in feet, Iran had fallen to rise no more, save 
spasmodically under Mohammedan rule. 

The fact is, that, in the subsequent flood of barbarians which 
for centuries overwhelmed and destroyed the whole of Europe, 
we behold, on all sides, streams of Northern European races, 
members of the same family of Japhet. It was the Goths that 
ruined Palestine even in the time of St. Jerome. If side by side 
with ISTorthern nations the Huns appeared, no one knows pre- 
cisely whence they came. Attila called himself King of the 
Scythians and the Goths, as w^ell as grandson of Nimrod. He 
came with his mighty hosts from beyond the Danube ; this is all 
that can be said with certainty of his origin. 

The East, therefore, was already dead, and could furnish no 
powerful foe against that Pome which it detested. It is even in 
this Oriental supineness that we can find a reason for the dura- 
tion of the inglorious empire of Constantinople. Rome and the 
West, though far more vigorous, were overwhelmed by barbari- 
ans of the same original stock sent by Providence to " renew its 
youth like that of the eagle." Constantinople and the East con- 
tinued for a thousand years longer to drag out their feeble exist- 
ence, because the far Orient could not send a few of its tribes to 
touch their walls and cause them to crumble into dust. It is 
even remarkable that the armies of Mohammed and his succes- 
sors, in the flush of their new fanaticism, did not dare for a long 



THE WOELD LED BY EUEOPE. 45 

time to attack the race of Japliet settled on the Bosporus. From 
their native Arabia they easily overran Egypt and JSTorthern 
Africa, Syria and Palestine, Mesopotamia and Persia. But Asia 
Minor and Thrace remained for centuries proof against their 
fury, and, whenever their fleets appeared in the Bosporus, they 
were easily defeated by the unworthy successors of Constantine 
and Theodosius. This fact, which has not been sufficiently no- 
ticed, shows conclusively that the energy imparted by Moham- 
medanism to Oriental nations w^ould have lasted but a short 
time, and encountered in the West a successful resistance, had 
not the Turks appeared on the scene, destroyed the Saracen 
dynasties, and, by infusing the blood of Central Asia into the 
veins of Eastern and Southern fanatics, prolonged for so many 
ages the sway of the Crescent over a large portion of the globe. 

This was the turning-point in human affairs betw^een the 
East and the West. We do not write' history, and cannot, con- 
sequently, enter into details. It is enough to say that a new 
element, strengthened by a long struggle with Moslemism, w^as 
to give to the West a lasting preponderance which ancient liome 
could not possess, and whose developments we see in our days. 
This new element w^as the Christian religion, solidly established 
on the ruins of idolatry and heresy ; far more soliilly established, 
consequently, than under the Christian emperors of Pome, 
while paganism still existed in the capital itself. 

The Christian religion, which was to make one society of all 
the children of Adam ; which, at its birth, took the name of uni- 
versal or catholic (whereas previously all religions had been 
merely national, and therefore very limited in their effects upon 
mankind at large) ; which alone was destined to establish and 
maintain, through all ages, spite of innumerable obstacles, a real 
universal sway over all nations and tribes — the Christian religion 
alone could give one race preponderance over others until all 
should become, as it were, merged into one. 

At first it seemed that Providence destined that high calling 
for the Semitic branch of the human family. The Hebrew peo- 
ple, trained by God himself, through so many ages, for the high- 
est purposes, finally gave birth to the great Leader who, by 
redeeming all men, was to gather them all into one family. 
This Leader, our divine Lord, himself a Hebrew, chose twelve 
men of the same nation to be the founders of the great edifice. 
We know how the divine plan was frustrated by the stubbornness 
of the Jews, who rejected the corner-stone of the huilding, to be 
themselves dashed against its walls and destroyed. The sons of 
Japhet were substituted for the sons of Sem, Europe for Asia, 
Pome for Jerusalem ; and the real commencement of the lasting 
preponderance of the West dates from the establishment of the 
Christian Church in Pome. 



46 THE WORLD LED BY EUROPE. 

See how, from Christianity, the Caucasian race, as we call it, 
came to be the rulers of the world. A mighty revolution, 
wherein all the branches of that great race become intermingled 
and confused, sweeps over the Roman Empire. Every thing 
seems destroyed by the onset of the barbarians, in order that 
they, by receiving the only true religion which they found with- 
out seeking among those whom they conquered, might become 
worthy of fulfilling the designs of Providence. All the barriers 
are overthrown that one institution, called Christendom, may 
take form and harmony. There are to be no more Romans, nor 
Gauls, nor Iberians, nor Germans, nor Scandinavians — only 
Christians. It is a renewed and reinvigorated race of Japhet, 
imbued with true doctrine, clothed with solid virtues, animated 
with an overwhelming energy. It is a colossal statue, moulded 
by popes, chiselled by bishops, set on its feet by Christian em- 
perors and kings, chiefly by Charlemagne, Alfred, Louis IX., 
and Otho. Is there not perfect unity between those great men 
divided by such intervals of space and time ? Is not their work 
a universal republic, whose foundations they laid with their own 
hands ? 

The rest of the world, still prostrate at the feet of foolish 
.idols, or carried away by human errors and delusions, sinks 
deeper and deeper into apathy and corruption, while Europe is 
reserved for mighty purposes in centuries to come. A stream is 
gathering in the AVest, which is destined to sweep down and 
bear away all obstacles, and to cover every continent with its 
regenerating waters. 

That stream is modern European history. It has been re- 
corded in thousands of volumes, many of which, however, are 
totally unreliable fables of those mighty events. Those only 
have had the key to its right interpretation who have followed 
the Christian light given from above, as a star, to guide the won- 
derful giant in his course. The chief among them were : of old, 
Augustine, the author of the " City of God ; " Orosius, the first 
to condense the annals of the world into the formula, " divind 
2?rovidentid regitur onundus et homo / " Otho of Freysinguen, 
in his work " De mutatione rerum^'' and the author of " Gesta 
Dei per FrariGos ;'''' in modern times, Bossuet and his follow- 
ers. 

The destruction of idolatry was of such vital importance in 
the regeneration of the world that it sufficed as a dogma to im- 
bue a great branch of the Semitic family with a strong life for 
several centuries. Moslemism has no other truth to support it 
than the assertion of God's unity; but, by waging war against 
the Trinity and, consequently, against the very foundation of 
Christian belief, it became, for a long time, the greatest obstacle 
to the dissemination of truth. It prevented the early triumph 



THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 47 

of the Caucasian race, and galvanized, for a time, tlie nations of 
the East and South into a false life. 

The ravages of the Tartar hordes under Genghis Khan and 
his successors were in no sense life, but only a fitful madness. 

The European stream was thus impeded in its flood bj the 
new activity of Arabia and Turkomania. It was a struggle in 
which victory, for a long time, hung in the balance : it required 
many crusades of the whole of Western Europe ; the long hero- 
ism of the Spanish and Portuguese nations ; the incessant attack 
and defence of the Templars and the Knights of Malta over the 
whole surface of the Mediterranean Sea, to secure the prepon- 
derance of the "West. It was finally decided at Lepanto. Since 
that great day, Mohammedanism has gradually declined, and 
there now seems no insurmountable obstacle to the free flowing 
of the European stream. 

This stream, however, is not homogeneous : far from it. 
Had the Christian element always remained alone in it, or at 
least supreme, long ere this the victory would have been secure 
forever, and the Catholic missions alone would have fulfilled the 
old prophecies and given to the sons of Japhet possession of the 
tents of Sem — a glorious work so well begun in the East, in 
India and Japan ; in the West, in the whole of America ! 

But, unfortunately, the policy of the papacy, which was also 
that of Charlemagne, and of other great Christian sovereigns, was 
not continued. The !Norman feudalism of England and North- 
ern France ; the Csesarism of Germany and the Capetian kings ; 
the heresies brought from the East by the Crusaders ; the pagan- 
ism and neo-Platonism of the revival of learning ; above all, the 
fearful upheaval of the whole of Europe by the Protestant schism 
and heresy, troubled the purity of that great Japhetic stream, 
and has retarded to our days its momentous and overwhelming 
impetuosity. 

Wonderful, indeed, that in the whole of Europe one small 
island alone was forever stubbornly opposed to all these aberra- 
tions, which has stood her ground firmly, and, we may now say, 
successfully. The reader already knows that the demonstration 
of this stupendous fact is the object of the present volume. 

Having stood aloof so long from all those wanderings from 
the right path, she has scarcely appeared in the field of European 
history save as the victim of Scandinavia and of England. But 
there is a time in the series of ages for the appearance of all 
those called by Providence to enact a part. What is a myriad 
of years for man is not a moment for God ; and it would seem 
that we had reached at last the epoch wherein Ireland is to be 
rewarded for her steadfastness and fidelity. 

The impetus now imparted to European power becomes each 
day more clearly defined, and, to judge by recent appearances, 



48 THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 

Irishmen are about to play no inglorions part in it. The power 
of expansion, so characteristic of them from the beginning, has 
of late years assumed gigantic proportions. The very hatred of 
their enemies, the measures adopted by their oppressors to anni- 
hilate them, have only served to give them a larger field of 
operations and a much stronger force. It is not without pur- 
pose that God has spread. them in such numbers over so many 
different islands and continents. It is theirs to give to the 
spread of Japhetism among the sons of Sem its right direction 
and results. The other races of Western Europe would, had 
they been left to themselves alone, have converted that great 
event into a curse for mankind, and perhaps the forerunner of 
the last calamities ; but the Irish, having kept themselves pure, 
are the true instruments in the hands of God for righting what 
is wrong and purifying what is corrupt. 

Had Europe remained in its entirety as steadfast to the true 
Christian spirit as the small island which dots the sea on its 
western border, what an incalculable happiness it would have 
proved to the whole globe, resting as it does to-day under the 
lead of the race of Japhet ! 

But where now are the pure waters which should vivify and 
fertilize it ? Innumerable elements are floating in their midst 
which can but destroy life and spread barrenness everywhere. 

Let us see what Europeans believe ; what are the motives 
which actuate them ; what they propose to themselves in dis- 
seminating their influence and establishing their dominion ; what 
the real, openly-avowed purposes of the leaders are in the vast 
scheme which embraces the whole earth ; what becomes of for- 
eign races as soon as they come in contact with them. 

The bare idea causes the blood of the Christian to curdle in 
his veins, and he thanks God that his life shall not be pro- 
longed to witness the successful termination of the vast con- 
spiracy against God and humanity. 

For, in our days, spite of so many deviations in the course of 
the great European stream, it is truly a matter of wonder what 
power it has obtained over the globe in its mastery, its control, 
its unification. What, then, would have been the result had its 
course remained constantly under Christian guidance !' 

It is only a short time since the whole earth has become 
known to us ; and we may say that, for Europe, it has been 
enough only to know it in order to become at once the mistress 
of it ; such power has the Christian religion given her ! The first 
circumnavigation of the globe under Magellan took place but 
yesterday, and to-day European ships cover the oceans and seas 
of the world, bearing in every sail the breath and the spirit of 
Japhetism. The stubborn ice-fields of the pole can scarcely re- 
tard their course, and hardy navigators and adventurous travel- 



THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 49 

lers jeopardize tlieir lives in the pursuit of merely theoretical 
notions, void almost of any practical utility. 

The most remote and, up to recently, iaaccessible parts of the 
earth are as open to us, owing to steam, as were the countries 
bordering on the Mediterranean to the ancients. The Argo- 
nautic expedition along the southern coast of the Black Sea was 
in its day an heroic undertaking. The Phoenician colonies estab- 
lished in Africa and Spain by a race trying for the first time in 
the history of man to launch their ships on the ocean in order 
to trade with llTorthern tribes as far as Ireland and the Baltic, 
though never losing sight of the coast ; the attempts of the Car- 
thaginians to circumnavigate Africa ; the three years' voyages 
of the ships of Solomon in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, 
were one and all far more hazardous undertakings than the long 
voyages of our steamships across the Indian Ocean to Australia, 
or around Cape Horn to California and the South Sea Islands, 
through the Southern and ISTorthern Pacifies. 

From all large seaboard cities in any part of the globe, lines 
of steamers now bear men to every point of the compass, so that 
the very boards at the entrances of offices, to be found every- 
where for the accommodation of travellers, are as indices of works 
on universal geography. 

And the European, still unsatisfied with all he has achieved 
in speed and comfort, looks to more rapid and easier modes of 
conveyance. Scientific men have been for many years engaged 
in experiments by means of which they hope to replace the ocean 
by the atmosphere as a public highway for nations ; and the cur- 
rents of air rushing in every direction with the velocity of the 
most rapid winds may yet be used by our children instead of riv- 
ers, thenceforth deserted, and of ocean-streams at last left empty 
and waste as before the voyages of Columbus and De Gama. 

All this constitutes a ]3ositive and stern fact staring us in the 
face, and giving to the Caucasian race a power of which our an- 
cestors would never have dreamed. And if all this is to be the 
only result of man's activity — the attainment of merely worldly 
purposes — God, whose world this is, may look down on it from 
heaven as on the work of Titans preparing to attack his rights, 
and He will know how to turn all these mighty efforts of the 
sons of Japhet to his own holy designs. He may use a small 
branch of that great race, preserved purposely from the begin- 
ning unsullied by mere thrift, and prejDared for his work by long 
persecution, a consideration which we shall examine later on. 

Meanwhile the great mass of the European family is allowed 
to go on in its wonderful undertaking ; and we turn to it yet a 
short while. 

As if to favor still more directly this work of the unification 
of the globe. Providence has placed at the disposal of the prime 
4 



50 THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 

movers m the enterprise peciiniary means whicli no one could 
have foreseen a few years ago. 

In 1846, on a small branch of one of the great rivers of Cali- 
fornia, a colonist discovers gold carried as dust with the sand, 
and soon a great ]3art of the country is found to be immensely 
rich in the precious metal. That first discovery is followed by 
others equally important, and after a few years gold is found in 
abundance on both sides of a long range of the Rocky Moun- 
tains ; again in the north, nearly as high up as the arctic circle. 
JSTorth America, in fact, is found to be a vast gold deposit. Aus- 
tralia soon follows, and that new continent, whose exploration 
has scarcely begun, is said to be dotted all over by large oases of 
auriferous rock and gravel. In due time the same news comes 
from South Africa, where it has been lately jeported that dia- 
monds, in addition to gold, enrich the explorer and the work- 
man. 

It is needless to speak of mines of silver and mercury after 
gold and diamonds ; but the result is that the European race is 
straightway provided with an enormous wealth commensurate 
with the immense commercial and manufacturing enterprises 
required for the establishment of its supremacy all over the globe. 

There is work, therefore, for all the ships afloat ; others and 
larger ones have to be constructed; and modern engineering 
skill places on the bosom of the deep sea vessels which few, in- 
deed, of the greatest rivers can accommodate in their channels 
and bays. 

All these means of dominion and dissemination once pro- 
cured, the great work clearly assigned to the race of Japhet may 
proceed. 

Intercourse with the most savage and uncivilized tribes is 
eagerly cultivated even at the risk of life. I^ew avenues to trade 
are opened up in places where men, still living in the most primi- 
tive state, have few if any wants ; and it is -considered as part of 
the keen merchant's skill to fill the minds of these uncouth and 
unsophisticated barbarians with the desire of every possible lux- 
ury. -Have we not lately heard that the savages of the Feejee 
Islands, who were a few years ago cannibals, have now a king 
seeking the protection of England, if not the annexation of his 
kingdom to the British empire ? 

Yes, the material civilization of Europe, the new discoveries 
of steam and magnetism, the untiring energy of men aiming at 
universal dominion, give to the Caucasian race such a superiority 
over the rest of mankind that the time seems to be fast ap- 
proaching when the manners, the dress, the look even of Euro- 
peans, will supersede all other types, and spread everywhere the 
dead level of our habits. 

This fact has already been realized in America, North and 



THE "WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 51 

Soutli. Geograpliers may give lengthened descriptions of the 
original tribes which still possess a shadow of existence ; foreign 
readers may perhaps imagine that the continent is still in the 
quiet possession of rude and nncivilized races roaming at will 
over its surface, and allowing some Europeans to occupy certain 
cities and harbors for the purposes of trade and barter. "We 
know that nothing could be more erroneous. The Europeans 
are the real possessors, north and south ; the Indians are per- 
mitted to exist on a few spots contracting year by year into nar- 
rower limits. The northern and larger half of the continent is 
chiefly the dwelling-place of the most active branch of the bold 
race of Japhet. The first of the iron lines which are to connect 
its Atlantic and Pacific coasts has recently been laid. Cities 
spring up all along its track : the harbors of California, Oregon, 
and Alaska, will soon swarm much more than now with hardy 
navigators ready to europeanize the various groups of islands 
scattered over the Pacific. Already in the Sandwich and Tahiti 
groups the number of Europeans is greatly in excess of that of 
the natives. Those natives who, in the Philippine Islands, have 
been preserved by the Catholic Church, will too soon disappear 
from the surface of the largest ocean of the globe. 

Then Eastern Asia will be attacked much more seriously 
than ever before. Since its . discovery, Europeans could only 
reach it through the long distances which divide Western Europe 
from China and Japan. But within a short time numerous lines 
of steamships, starting from San Francisco, Portland, Honolulu, 
and many other harbors yet nameless, will land travellers in 
Yokohama, Hakodadi, Yeddo, Shanghai, Canton, and other em- 
poriums of Asia. . 

ISTor will the Americans of the United States be alone in the 
race. Several governments are preparing to cut a canal through 
the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, or Tehuantepec, as has 
already been done with that of Sue'z ; and soon ships starting 
from Western Europe will, with the aid of steam, traverse the 
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans successively as two large lakes to 
land their passengers and cargoes on the frontiers of China and 
India. 

The Japanese, those Englishmen of the East, are ready to 
adopt European inventions. They are indeed already expert in. 
many of them, and seem on the alert to conform to European 
manners. It is said that the nation is divided into two parties 
on that very question of conformity ; before long they will.allbe' 
of one mind. What an impulse will thus be given to the euro- 
peanization of China and Tartary ! 

In Hindostan, England has fairly begun the work ; but the 
climate of the peninsula offering an obstacle to the introduction 
of a large number of men of the Caucasian race, it will be more 



52 THE WORLD LED BY EUROPi:. 

probably from the foot of the Hmialaya Mountains that the 
spread of the race will commence. ' Already the English and the 
Eussians are concentrating their forces on the Upper Indus. 
The question merely is, Which nation will be the first to inocu- 
late the dreamy sons of Sem with the spirit and blood of Ja- 
phet ? It seems that Central Asia will form the rally in g-ground 
for the last efforts of the Titans to unify their power, as it was 
thence that the power of God first dispersed them. 

A glance at the rest of the world as witnessing the same as- 
tonishing spectacle, and we pass on. Australia is clearly des- 
tined to be entirely European ; the number of natives, already 
insignificant compared to that of the colonists, will soon disap- 
pear utterly. Turkey, the Caucasus, Bokhara, are rapidly tak- 
ing a new shape and adopting Western manners. 

The African triangle offers the greatest resistance, owing to 
its deserts, its terrible climate, and the savage or childish dispo- 
sition of its inhabitants. Yet the attempt to europeanize it is 
at this moment in earnest action at its southernmost cape, all 
along its northern line skirting the Mediterranean, in Egypt 
chiefly, and also through the Erythrean Gulf in the east ; finally, 
on many points of its western shore, which, strange to say, lags 
behind, although it formed the first point of discovery by the 
Portuguese. 

To condense all we have just said to a few lines : it looks as 
tliough all races of men, except tlie Caucasian, were undergoing 
a rapid process of unification or disappearance. 

In America 'certainly the phenomenon is most striking. 

In Asia all the native races seem palsied and unable to hold 
together in the presence of the Russians and the English. 

In Africa, Mohammedanism still preserves to the natives a 
certain activity of life, but even that is fost on the wane. 

Einally, in Australia and the Pacific Ocean the disappearance 
of the natives is still more s'triking and more sudden in its action 
than even in America. 

This state of things did not exist two hundred years ago ; 
and when the Crusades began the reverse was the case. 

We cannot believe that this immense, universal fact is merely 
an exterior one resulting from new appliances, new comforts, 
new outward habits ; what is called material civilization. We 
cannot believe that it is merely the dress, houses, culinary re- 
gime, the popular customs of those numerous foreign tribes or 
nations which are undergoing such a wonderful change. This 
outward phenomenon supposes a siibstratum, an interior reality 
of ideas and principles worthy our chief attention as the real 
cause of all those exterior changes ; a cause, nevertheless, which 
is scarcely thought of iji the public estimate of this mighty revo- 
lution. 



THE WOKLD LED BY EUEOPE. 53 

It is tlie mind of Europe : it is the belief or want of belief, 
the religious or irreligious views, tlie grasping ambition, tlie 
beadlong desire of an impossible or unholy happiness, the reck- 
less sway of unbridled passions, which try to spread themselves 
among all nations, and bring them all up, or rather down, to the 
level of intoxicated, tottering, maddened Europe. 

If the monstrous scheme succeeds, there will be no more 
prayer in the villages of the devout Maronites, no more submis- 
sion to God in the mountains of Armenia, no more simplicity of 
faith among the shepherds of Chaldea, no more purity of life 
among the wandering children of Asiatic deserts. 

Side by side with truth and virtue many errors and mon- 
strosities will doubtless disappear, but not to be replaced wdth 
what is much better. 

The muezzin of the mosques will no longer raise his voice 
from the minarets at noon and nightfall ; the simple Lama will 
no longer believe in the successive incarnations of Buddha ; no 
longer will the superstitious Hindoo cast himself beneath the car 
of Juggernaut ; many another such absurdity and crime will, let 
us hope, disappear forever. But with what benefit to mankind ? 
After all, is not superstition even better for men than total un- 
belief? And, when the whole world is reduced to the state of 
Europe, when what we daily Avitness there shall be reproduced 
in all continents and islands, will men really be more virtuous 
and happy ? 

"We must not think, however, that there is nothing truly 
good in the stupendous transformation which we have endeav-. 
ored to sketch. If it really be the accomplishment of the great 
prophecy mentioned by us at the beginning of this chapter, it is 
a noble and a glorious event. God will know how to turn it to 
good account, and it is for us to hail its coming with thankful- 
ness. 

There is no doubt that the actual superiority of the race of 
Japhet, by force of which this wonderful revolution is being ac- 
complished, is the result of Christianity, that is, of Catholicity. 
It is because Europe, or the agglomeration of the various 
branches of the race of Japhet, was for fifteen hundred years 
overshadowed by the true temple of God, his glorious and in- 
fallible Church; it is because the education of Europeans is 
mainly due to the true messengers of God, the Popes and the 
bishops ; it is because the mind of Europe was really formed by 
the great Catholic thinkers, nurtured in the monasteries and 
convents of the Church ; it is, finally, because Europeans are 
truly the sons of martyrs and crusaders, that on them devolves 
the great mission of regenerating and blending into one the 
whole world. 

But, unfortunately, the work is spoiled by adjuncts in the 



54 THE WORLD LED BY EUROPE. 

movement which have grown np in the centuries preceding ns. 
In fact, the whole European movement has been thrown on a 
wrong track, which we have akeady pointed out as mere mate- 
rial civilization. 

Still, in spite of all the dross, there is a great deal of pure 
metal in the Japhetic movement. Underlying it all runs the 
doctrine that all men are sprung from the same father, and that 
all have had the same liedeemer; that, consequently, all are 
brethren, and that there should be no place among them for 
castes and classes, as of superior and inferior beings ; that the 
God the Christians adore is alone omnipotent ; that idolatry of 
all kinds ought to disappear, and that ultimately there should be 
but one ilock and one shepherd. 

These are saving truths, still held to in the main by the race 
of Japhet, in spite of some harsh and opposing false assertions, 
truths which the Catholic Church alone teaches in their purity, 
and which are yet destined, we hope, to make one of all mankind. 

But her claims are yet far from being acknowledged by the 
leaders in the movement. And who are those leaders ? A ques- 
tion all-important.- 

England is certainly the first and foremost. Endowed with 
ail the characteristics of the Scandinavian race, which we shall 
touch upon after, deeply infused with the blood of the Danes 
and J^orthmen, she has all the indomitable energy, all the sys- 
tematic grasp of mind and sternness of purpose joined to the 
wise spirit of compromise and conservatism of the men of the 
far ISTorth ; she, of all nations, has inherited their great power of 
expansion at sea, possessing all the roving propensities of the 
old Yikings, and the spirit of trade, enterprise, and colonization, 
of those old Phoenicians of the arctic circle. 

The Catholic south of Europe, Spain and Portugal, having, 
through causes which it is not the place to investigate here, lost 
their power on the ocean ; the temporary maritime su]3remacy 
of Holland having passed away, because the people of that flat 
country were too close and narrow-minded to grasp the world 
for any length of time ; Prance, the only modern rival of Eng- 
land as a naval power, having been compelled, owing to the revo- 
lutions of the last and the present centuries, to concentrate her 
whole strength on the Continent of Europe ; the young giant of 
the West, America, being yet unable to grasp at once a vast con- 
tinent and universal sway over the pathways of the ocean, Eng- 
land had free scope for her maritime enterprises, and she threw 
herself headlong into this career. Out of Europe she is incon- 
testably the first power of the whole world. To give a better 
idea of the extent of her dominion, we subjoin an abridged 
sketch from the "History of a Hundred Years," by Cesare 
Cantu : 



THE WOELD LED BY EUROPE. 55 

" In Europe slie has colonies at Heligoland, Gibraltar, Malta, 
and the Ionian Isles. 

" In Africa, Bathnrst, Sierra Leone, many establishments on 
the coast of Guinea, the islands of Mauritius, Eodrigo, Sechelles, 
Socotora, Ascension, St. Helena, and, most important of all, the 
Cape Colony. 

"In Asia, where she replaced the French and Dutch, she 
has, besides Ceylon, an empire of 150,000,000 of people in India, 
the islands of Singapore and Sumatra, part of Malacca, and many 
establishments in China. 

"In America, she is mistress of Canada, ISTew Brunswick, 
and other eastern provinces; the Lucayes, Bermudas, most of 
the Antilles, part of Guiana, and the Falkland Isles. 
■ " In the Southern Ocean, the greater j)art of Australia, Tas- 
mania, !N^orfolk, Yan Diemen's Land, New Zealand, and many 
other groups of Oceanica are hers. 

" W hat other state can compete with her in the management 
of colonies, and in the selection of situations from which she 
could command the sea ? Jersey and Guernsey are her keys of 
the Straits of Dover ; from Heligoland she can open or shut the 
mouths of the Elbe and Weser ; from Gibraltar she keeps her 
eye on Spain and the States of Barbary, and holds the gates of 
the Mediterranean. With Malta and Corfu she has a like ad- 
vantage over the Levant. Socotora is for her the key of the 
Red Sea, whence she commands Eastern Africa and Abyssinia. 
Ormuz, Chesmi, and Buschir, give her the mastery over the 
Persian Gulf, and the large rivers which flow into it. Aden 
secures the communication of Bombay with Suez. Pulo Pinang 
makes her mistress of the Straits of Malacca, and Singapore, of 
the passage between China and India. At the Cape of Good 
Hope her troops form an advanced guard over the Indian Ocean ; 
and from Jamaica she rules the Antilles and trades securely 
with the rest of Central and South America. 

" Englishmen have made a careful survey of the whole of the 
Mediterranean Sea, of the course of the Indus, the Ganges, the 
Bramaputra, the Godavery, and other rivers of India ; of the 
whole littoral betAveen Cape Colony and China ; England has 
steamships on the Amazon and I^iger, and her vessels are found 
everywhere on the coast of Chili and Peru." 

Other European families try to follow in her footsteps ; at 
their head the United States now stand. Primitively an offshoot 
of the English stock, the blood of all other Japhetic races has given 
the latter country an activity and boldness which will render it 
in time superior in those respects to the mother-country herself. 

Yet at this time, even in the presence of the United States, 
in the presence of all other maritime powers, England stands at 
the head of the Japhetic movement. 



56 THE WOELD LED BY EUKOPE. 

Unfortunately, her first aim, after acquiring wealtli and secur- 
ing lier power, is, to exclude the Homan Catliolic Clinrcli as far 
as is practicable from the benefit of the system, to oppose her 
whenever she wonld follow in the wake of her progress, and 
either to allow paganism or Mohammedanism to continue in 
quiet possession wherever they exist, or to substitute for them as 
far as possible her Protestantism. At all events, the Catholicity 
of the Church is to be crushed, or at least thwarted, to make 
room for the catholicity of the English nation. 

And it looks as though such, in truth, would have been the 
result, had not the stubbornness of the Irish character stood in 
the way ; if the Celt of Erin, after centuries of oppression and 
opposition to the false wanderings of the European stream, had 
not insisted on following the English lord in his travels, dogging 
his steps everywhere, entering his ships welcome or unwelcome, 
rushing on shore with him wherever he thought fit to land, and 
there planted his shanty and his frame church in the very sight of 
stately palaces lately erected, and gorgeous temples with storied 
windows and softly-carpeted floors. 

And after a few years the Irish Celt would show himself as 
active and industrious in his new country as oppression had 
made him indolent and careless on his own soil ; the shanty 
would be replaced by a house Avorthy of a man ; above all, the 
humble dwelling which he first raised to his God would disap- 
pear to make room for an edifice not altogether unworthy of 
divine majesty ; at least, far above the pretentious structures of 
the oppressors of his religion. The eyes of men would be again 
turned to " the city built upon a mountain ; " and the character 
of universality, instead of being wrested from the true Church, 
would become more resplendent than ever through the steadfast 
Irish Celt. 

Thus the spreading of the Gospel in distant regions would 
be accomplished without a navy of their own. As their ances- 
tors did in pagan times, they would use the vessels of nations 
born for thrift and trade ; the stately ships of the "Egyptians " 
w^ould be used by the true " people of God." 

Eor them hath Stephenson perfected the steam-engine, so as 
to enable vessels to undertake long voyages at sea without the 
necessary help of sails ; for them Brunei and others had spent 
long years in planning and constructing novel ISToah's arks capa- 
ble of containing all clean and unclean animals ; for them the 
Barings and other wealthy capitalists had embraced the five con- 
tinents and the isles of the ocean in their financial schemes ; the 
Jews of England, Germany, and France, the Rothschilds and 
Mendelssohns, had accumulated large amounts of money to lend 
to ship-building companies ; for them, in fine, the long-hidden 
gold deposits of California, Australia, and many other places, had 



THE WOELD LED BY EUEOPE. 57 

been discovered at the proper time to replenish the coffers of the 
godless, that they might undertake to furnish the means of trans- 
portation and settlement for the missionaries of God ! 

And, to prove that this is no exaggeration, it is enough to 
look at the number of emigrants that were to be carried to for- 
eign parts, and that actually left England for her various colonies 
or for the United States. For several years one thousand Irish 
people sailed daily from the ports of Great Britain ; and for a 
great number of years 200,000 at least did so every twelve 
months. When we come to contrast the Irish at home with the 
Irish abroad, we shall give fuller details than are possible here. 
These few words suffice to show the immense number of vessels 
and the vast sums that were required for such an extraordinary 
operation. 

This phenomenon is surely curious enough, universal enough, 
and sufficiently portentous in its consequences, to deserve a 
thorough inquiry into its causes and the way in which it was 
brought about. 

It will be seen that it all came from the Irish having kept 
themselves aloof from the other branches of the great Japhetic 
race in order to join in the general movement at the right time 
and in their own way, constantly opposed to all the evil that 
is in it, but using it in the way Providence intended. 

The chapters which follov^^ will be devoted to the develop- 
ment of this general idea ; ,the few remarks with which we close 
the present may tend to set the conclusion which we draw more 
distinctly before our minds. 

There is no doubt that, taking the Irish nation as a whole, 
we find in it features which are visible in no other European 
nation ; and that, taking Europe as a whole, in all its comj)lexity 
of habits, manners, tendencies, and ways of life, we have a pict- 
ure wholly distinct from that of the Irish people. England has 
striven during the last eight hundred years to shape it and make 
it the creature of her thought, and England has utterly failed. 

The same race of men and women inhabit the isle of Erin to- 
day as that which held it a thousand years ago, wuth the distinc- 
tion that it is now far more wretched and deserving of pity than 
it was then. The people possess the same primitive habits, 
simple thoughts, ardent impulsiveness, stubborn spirit, and buoy- 
ant disposition, in spite of ages of oppression. In the course of 
centuries they have not furnished a single man to that army 
of rash minds which have carried the rest of Europe headlong 
through lofty, perhaps, but at bottom empty and idle theories, 
to the brink of that bottomless abyss into which no one can peer 
without a shudder. ' 

!N"o heresiarch has found place among them ; no fanciful phi- 
losopher, no holder of fitful and lurid light to deceive nations 



58 THE WOELD LED BY EUEOPE. 

and lead them astray, no propoimder of social theories opposed 
to those of the Gospel, no inventor of new theogonies and cos- 
mologies — new in name, old in fact — rediscovered by modern 
students in the Kings of China, the Yeclas of Hindostan, the 
Zends of Persia, or Eddas of the ISTorth ; no ardent explorer of 
Nature, seeking in the bowels of the earth, or on the summits of 
mountains, or in the depths of the ocean, or the motions of the 
stars, proofs that God does not exist, or that matter has always 
existedj that man has made himself, developing his own con- 
sciousness out of the instinct of the brute, or even out of the 
material motions of the zoophyte. 

We would beg the reader to bear in mind those insane theo- 
ries so prevalent to-day, out of which society can hope for noth- 
ing but convulsions and calamities, to see how all the nations 
of Europe have contributed to the baneful result except the 
Irish ; that they alone have furnished no false leader in those 
wanderings from the right path ; that their community has been 
opposed all through to the adoption of the theories which led to 
them, have spurned them with contempt, and even refused to 
inquire into them : with these thoughts and recollections in his 
mind, he may understand what we mean when we assert that 
the Irish have stubbornly refused to enter upon the European 
movement. Although, by the reception of Christianity, they 
were admitted into the European family, the Christianity which 
they received was so thoroughly imbibed and so completely car- 
ried out that any thing in the least opposed to it was sternly 
rejected by the whole nation. Hence they became a people of 
peculiar habits. Kejecting the harsh features of feudalism, not 
caring for the refinement of the so-called revival of learning, 
stei^nly opposed at all times to Protestantism, they would have 
naught to do with what was rejected or even suspected by the 
Church, until in our days they offer to the eyes of the world the 
spectacle we have sketched. Thus have they, not the least by 
reason of their long martyrdom, become fit instruments for the 
great work Providence asks of them to-day. 

England, the great leader in the material part of the social 
movement which has been the subject of this chapter, for a long 
time hesitated to adopt principles altogether subversive to so- 
ciety. In her worldly good sense she endeavored to follow what 
she imagined a via media in her wisdom, to avoid what seemed 
to her extremes, but what is in reality the eternal antagonism 
of truth and falsehood, of order and chaos. Twenty years back 
there was a unanimity among English writers to speak the lan- 
guage of moderation and good sense whenever a rash author of 
foreign nations hazarded some dangerous novelties ; and in their 
reviews they immediately pointed out the poison which lay con- 
cealed under the covering of science or imagination, and the peril 



THE WORLD LED BY EUROPE. 59 

of these ever-increasing new discoveries. If any Englishman 
sanctioned those theories, he could not form a school among his 
countryuien, and remained almost alone of his party. 

But at last England has given way to the universal spread 
of temptation, and to-day she runs the race of disorganization as 
ardent as any, striving to be a leader among other leaders to 
ruin. Every one is astounded at the sudden and remarkable 
change. It is truly inexplicable, save by the fearful axiom, Quos 
Deus Tiult ^erdere, dementat. Hence not a few expect soon 
to see storms sweep over the devoted island of Great Britain, 
which no longer forms an exception to the universality of the 
evil we have indicated. 

Which, then, is the one safe spot in Europe, whither the tide 
of folly, or madness rather, has not yet come I 

Ireland alone is the answer. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE lEISH BETTER PEEPAKED TO EECEIVE CHRISTIANITY THAN 
OTHER NATIONS. 

The introdnction of Christianity gave Europe a power over 
the world which pagan Home conld not possess. All the branches 
of the Japhetic family combined to form what was with justice 
and propriety called Christendom. Ireland, by receiving the 
Gospel, was really making her first entry into the European 
family ; but there were certain peculiarities in her performance 
of this great act which gave her national life, already deviating 
from that of other European nations, a unique impulse. The first 
of those peculiarities consisted in her preparation for the great 
reception of the faith, and the few obstacles she encountered in 
her adoption of it, compared with those of the rest of the world., 

Providence wisely decreed that redemption should be delayed 
until a large portion of mankind had attained to the highest 
civilization. It was not in a time of ignorance and barbarism 
that the Saviour was born. The Augustan is, undoubtedlj^, the 
most intellectual and refined age, in point of literary and artistic 
taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuries before, 
Greece had reached the summit of science and art. ]N^o country, 
in ancient or modern times, has surpassed the acumen of her 
philosophical writers and the aesthetic perfection of her poets and 
artists. Rome made use of her to embellish her cities, and in- 
herited her taste for science and literature. 

But art and literature embody ideas only ; and, as Ozanam 
says so well : " Beneath the current of ideas which dispute the 
empire of the world, lies that world itself such as labor has made 
it, with that treasure of wealth and visible adornment which 
render it worthy of being the transient sojourn-place of immortal 
souls. Beneath the true, the good, and the beautiful, lies the 
useful, which is brightened by their reflection. IsTo people has 
more keenly appreciated the idea of utility than that of Pome ;. 
none has ever laid upon the earth a hand more full of power, or 
more capable of transforming it ; nor more profusely flung the 
treasures of earth at the feet of humanity. .• . . 



PEEPAEATION" FOR CHRISTIANITY. 61 

" At the close of tTie second century .... the rhetorician 
Aristides celebrated in the following terms the greatness of the 
Eoman Empire : ' Komans, the whole world beneath yoiir do- 
minion seems to keep a day of festival. From time to time a 
sound of battle comes to you from the ends of the earth, where 
you are repelling the Goth, the Moor, or the Arab. But soon 
that sound is dispersed like a dream. Other are the rivalries 
and different the conflicts which you excite through the universe. 
They are combats of glory, rivalries in magnificence between 
provinces and cities. Through you, gymnasia, aqueducts, porti- 
coes, temples, and schools, are multiplied ; the very soil revives, 
and the earth is but one vast garden ! ' 

" Similar, also, was the language of the stern Tertullian : ' In 
truth, the world becomes day after day richer and better culti- 
vated ; even the islands are no longer solitudes ; the rocks have 
no more terrors for the navigator ; everywhere there are habita- 
tions, population, law, and life.' 

" The legions of Eome had constructed the roads which fur- 
rowed mountains, leaped over marshes, and crossed so many 
different provinces with a like solidity, regularity, and uniform- 
ity ; and the various races of men were lost in admiration at the 
sight of the mighty works which were attributed in after-times 
to Csesar, to Brunehaud, to Abelard ! " 

It was in the midst of those worldly glories that Christ was 
born, that he preached, and suffered, that his religion was estab- 
lished and propagated. It found proselytes at once among the 
most polished and the most learned of men, as well as among 
slaves and artisans ; and thus was it proved that Christianity 
could satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the most civilized as well 
as insure the happiness of the most numerous and miserable 
classes. 

But we must reflect that the advanced civilization of Greece 
and Home was in fact an immense obstacle to the propagation of 
truth, and, what is more to be regretted, often gave an unnatural 
aspect to the Christianity of the first ages in the Eoman world — 
a half-pagan look — so that the barbarian invasion was almost 
necessary to destroy every thing of the natural order ; that the 
Church alone remaining face to face with those uncouth children 
of the ITorth, might begin her mission anew and mould them all 
into the family called " Christendom." 

" Christianity," to quote Ozanam again, " shrank from con- 
demning a veneration of the beautiful, although idolatry was 
contained in it ; and as it honored the human mind and the arts 
it produced, so the persecution of the apostate Julian, in which 
the study of the classics had been forbidden to the faithful, was 
the severest of its trials. Literary history possesses no moment 
of greater interest than that which saw the school with its profane 



62 PREPAEATIOK FOR CHEISTIAE'ITY. 

— that is to say, pagan — traditions and texts received into the 
Clitircli. The Fathers, whose christian austerity is our wonder, 
were passionate in their love of antiquity, which they covered, as 
it were, with their sacred vestments. . . . By their favor, Yirgil 
traversed the ages of iron without losing a page, and, by right of 
his Fourth Eclogue, took rank among the prophets and the sibyls. 
St. Augustine would have blamed paganism less, if, in place of a 
temple to Cybele, it had raised a shrine to Plato, in which his 
works might have been publicly read. St. Jerome's dream is 
well known, and the scourging inflicted upon him by angels for 
having loved Cicero too well ; yet his repentance was but short- 
lived, since he caused the monks of the Mount of Olives to pass 
their nights in copying the Ciceronian dialogues, and did not 
shrink himself from expounding the comic and lyric poets to the 
children of Bethlehem." 

"We know already that nothing of the kind existed in Ireland 
when the Gospel reached her, and that there the new religion 
assumed a peculiar aspect, which has never varied, and which 
made her at once and forever a preeminently Christian nation. 

Among the Greeks and Romans, literature and art, although 
accepted by the Church, were nevertheless deeply impregnated 
with paganism. All their chief acts of social life required a pro- 
fession of idolatry ; even amusements, dramatic representations, 
and simple games, were religious and consequently pagan exhi- 
bitions. 

We do not here speak of the attractions of an atheistic and 
materialist philosophy, of a voluptuous, often, and demoraliz- 
ing literature and poetry, of an unimaginable prostitution of art 
to the vilest passions, which the relics of Pompeii too abundantly 
indicate. 

But apart from those excesses of corruption and unbelief, 
which, no doubt, virtuous pagans themselves abhorred, the ap- 
proved, correct, and so-called pure life of the best men of pagan 
Kome necessitated the contamination of idolatrous worship. 
Apart from the thousand duties, festivals, and the like, decreed 
or sanctioned by the state, the most ordinary acts of life, the en- 
listing of the soldier, the starting on a military expedition, the 
assumption of any civil office or magistracy, the civil oaths in the 
courts of law, the public bath, the public walk almost, the cur- 
rent terms in conversation, the private reading of the best books, 
the mere glancing at a multitude of exterior objects, constituted 
almost as many professions of a false and pagan worship. 

How could any one become a Christian and at the same time 
remain a Greek or a Eoman ? The gloomy views of the Mon- 
tanist Tertullian were, to many, frightful truths requiring constant 
care and self-examen. For the Christian there were two courses 
open — ^both excesses, yet either almost unavoidable : on the one 



PEEPAEATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 63 

side, a terrible rigorism, making life misupportable, next to im- 
possible ; on the otlier, a laxity of tlionglit and action leading to 
lukewarmness and sometimes apostasy. 

Bearing in mind what was written on the subject in the first 
three ages of Christianity, not only by Tertullian, but by most 
orthodox writers, St. Cyprian, Lactantius, Arnobius, and the 
authors of many Acts of martyrs, we may easily understand how 
the doctrines of Christianity stood in danger of never taking deep 
root in the hearts of men surrounded by such temptations, them- 
selves born in paganism, and remaining, after their conversion, 
exposed to seductions of such an alluring character. 

Therefore this same "high civilization," as it is called, in the 
midst of which Christianity was preached, was a real danger to 
the inward life of the new disciple of Christ. 

How could it be otherwise, when it is a fact now known to 
all, that, even at the beginning of the fifth century, Eome was 
almost entirely pagan, at least outwardly, and among her highest 
classes ; so that the poet Claudian, in addressing Honorius at the 
beginning of his sixth consulship, pointed out to him the site of 
the capitol still crowned with the Temple of Jove, surrounded by 
numerous pagan edifices, supporting in air an army of gods ; and 
all around temples, chapels, statues, without number — ^infact, the 
whole Roman and Greek mythology, standing in the City of the 
Catacombs and of the Popes ! 

The public calendars, preserved to this day, continued to note 
the pagan festivals side by side with the feasts of the Saviour and 
his apostles. Within the city and beyond, throughout Italy and 
the most remote provinces, idols and their altars were still sur- 
rounded by the thronging populace, prostrate at their feet. 

If in the cities the new religion already dared display some- 
thing of its inherent splendor, the whole rural population was 
still pagan, singing the praises of Ceres and of Bacchus, trembling 
at Fauns and Satyrs and the numerous divinities of the groves 
and fountains. Christianity then held the same standing in Italy 
that in the United States Catholicity holds to-day in the midst of 
innumerable religious sects. 

This is not the place to show how far the paganism of Greece 
and Eome had corrupted society, and how complete was its rot- 
tenness at the time. It has been already shown by several great 
writers of this century. Enough for our purpose to remark 
that even some Christian writers, of the age immediately succeed- 
ing that of the early martyrs, showed themselves more than half 
pagans in their tastes and productions. Ausonius in the "West, 
the preceptor of St. Paulinus, is so obscene in some of his poems, 
so thoroughly pagan in others, that critics have for a long time 
•hesitated to pronounce him a Christian. How many of his con- 
temporaries hovered like him on the confines of Christianity and 



64 PEEPAEATIO]^ FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

I^aganism ! "WTien Julian the apostate restored idolatry, many, 
wlio liad only disgraced the nam6 of Christian, openly returned 
to the worship of Jupiter and Yenus, and their apostasy could 
scarcely be cause for regret to sincere disciples of our Lord, 

In the East the phenomenon is less striking. Strange to say, 
idolatry did not remain so firmly rooted in the country, where it 
first took such an alluring shape; and Constantinople was in 
every sense of the word a Christian city when Rome, in her 
senate, fought with such persistent tenacity for her altars of Yic- 
tory, her vestals, and her ancient worship. 

Yet there, also. Christian writers were too apt to interfuse the 
old ideas with the new, and to adopt doctrines placed, as it were, 
midway between those of Plato and St. Paul. There were 
bishops even who were a scandal to the Church and yet remained 
in it. Synesius is the most striking example ; whose doctrine 
was certainly more philosophical than Christian, and whose life, 
though decorous, was altogether worldly. The history of Arian- 
ism shows that others besides Synesius were far removed from 
the ideal of Christian bishops so worthily represented at the time 
by many great doctors and holy pontiffs. 

Such, in the East as well as in the "West, were the perils be- 
setting the true Christian spirit at the very cradle of our holy 
religion. 

Nor was the danger confined to the mythology of paganism, 
its literature and poetry. Philosophy itself became a real stum- 
bling-block to many, who would fain appear disciples of faith, 
when they gave themselves up to the most unrestrained wander- 
ings of human reason. 

The truth is, that Greek philosophy, divided into so many 
schools in order to please all tastes, had become a wide-spread 
institution throughout the Poman world. The mind of the 
East was best adapted to it, and those who taught if were, con- 
sequently, nearly all Greeks. Cicero had made it fashionable 
among many of his countrymen ; and although the Latin mind, 
always practical to the verge of utilitarianism, was not con- 
genial to Utopian speculations, still, as it was the fashion, all in- 
tellectual men felt the need of becoming sufficiently acquainted 
with it to be able to speak of it and even to embrace some par- 
ticular school. Those patricians, who remained attached to the 
stern principles of the old republic, became Stoics ; while the 
men of the corrupt aristocracy called themselves, with Horace, 
members of the " Epicurean herd." Hence the necessity for all 
to train their minds to scientific speculation, converted the West- 
ern world into a hot-bed of wild and dangerous doctrines. 

In the opinion of some Eastern Fathers of the Church, Greek 
philosophy had been a preparation for the Gospel, and could be , 
made subservient to the conversion of many. Thus we find St. 



PEEPAEATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 65 

Justin, the martyr, all liis life long glorying in tlie name of phi- 
losopher, and continning to wear, even after his conversion, the 
philosopher's cloak so much derided by the scoffer, Lucian. 

Still, despite this very respectable opinion, We can entertain 
no doubt, in view of what haj)pened at the time and of subse- 
quent events, that philosophy grew to be a stumbling-block in 
the path of Christianity, and originated the worst and most dan- 
gerous forms of heresy ; that it sowed the seed, in the European 
mind, of all errors, by creating that speculative tendency of 
character so peculiar to most branches of the Japhetic race. 

Persian Dualism, and, as many think. Pantheistic Buddhism, 
which were then flourishing in Central and Eastern Asia, infected 
the Alexandrian schools, and impressed philosophy with a new 
and dreamy charactei-, which became the source of subsequent 
and frightful errors. The ISTeo-Platonism of Porphyry and Ploti- 
nus was intended, in the minds of its originators, to lay a scien- 
tific basis for polytheism ; and, in Jamblichus finally, became an 
open justification of the most absurd fables of mythology. 

But, though this might satisfy Julian and those who followed 
him in his apostasy, it could not come to be an inner danger to the 
Church. With many, however, it assumed a form which at once 
engendered the worst errors of Gnosticism ; and Gnosticism was, 
at first, considered a Christian heresy ; so that a man might be a 
pantheist, of the worst kind, and still call himself Christian. St. 
John had foreseen the danger from the beginning, and it is said 
that he wrote his gospel against it because the doctrine openly 
denied the divinity of Christ. But the sect became much more 
powerful after his death, and allured many Christians who were 
disposed, from a misinterpretation of some texts of St. Paul on 
the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, to embrace a sys- 
tem which professed to explain the origin of that struggle. 

The Alexandrian Gnosticism failed to excite in the minds of 
the holy monks of the East that aversion which we now feel for 
its tenets, inasmuch as it did not openly anathematize the 
Scriptures of the Old Law, nay, even preserved a certain out- 
ward respect for them, on account of the multitude of Jews liv- 
ing in Alexandria, and particularly because the open system of 
Dualism, which afterward came from Syria and in the hands of 
Manes established the existence of two equal and eternal princi- 
ples of good and evil, found no place in the teachings of Yalen- 
tinus and his school. 

But even this frightful Syrian Gnosticism, which gave to the 
principle of evil an origin as ancient and sacred as that of God 
himself — Manicheism barefaced and radically immoral — so re- 
pugnant to our feelings, so monstrous to our more correct ideas, 
bore a semblance of truth for many minds, at that time inclined 
toward every thing which came from the East. We know what a. 
5 



66 PEEPAEATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

firm hold those doctrines took on the great soul of Augustine, 
who for a long time professed and cherished them. Rome, un- 
der the pagan emperors, had received with open arms the Orien- 
tal gods and the philosophy which endeavored to explain their 
mythology ; and many gifted minds of the third and fourth cen- 
turies lost themselves in the contemplation of those mysteries 
which from out Central Asia spread a lurid glare over the "West- 
ern world. 

This first danger, however, was warded off by the writings 
of St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenseus of Lyons, Clement of Al- 
exandria, TertuUian, Origen, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and 
others, long before the time of St. Augustine, the last of them. 
Gnosticism was prevented from any longer imparting a wrong 
tendency to Christian doctrines, and it died out, until restored 
during the Crusades to revive in the middle ages in its most ma- 
lignant form. 

But at the very moment of its decline, philosophy entered the 
Church, almost to wreck her by inspiring Arius and Pelagius. 
The teachings of the first were clearly ISTeo-Platonic ; of the sec- 
ond, Stoic : and all the errors prevalent in the Church from the 
third to the sixth century originated in Arianism and Pelagian- 
ism. 

In Plato, as read in Alexandria, Arius found all the material 
for his doctrine, which spread like wild-fire over the whole 
Church. Many things conspired to swell the number of his 
adherents: the ardent love for philosophy so inherent in the 
Eastern Church, to the extent of many believing that Plato was 
almost a Christian, and his doctrines therefore endowed with real 
authority ; the natural disposition of men to adopt the new and 
a seeming rational explanation of unfathomable mysteries ; the 
apparent agreement of his doctrine with certain passages of 
Scripture, where the Son is said to be inferior to the Father ; but 
chiefly the satisfaction it afibrded to a number of new Christians 
who had embraced the faith at the conversion of Constantine on 
political rather than conscientious grounds, and who were at 
once relieved of the supernatural burden of believing in a God- 
man, born of a woman, and dying on a cross. Eaith reduced to 
an opinion ; religion become a philosophy ; a mere man, let his 
endowments be what they might, recognized as our guide, and 
not overwhelming us with the dread weight of a divine nature ; 
all this explains the historic phrase of St. Jerome after the Coun- 
cil of Pimini, " The world groaned and wondered to find itself 
Arian." 

Any person acquainted with ecclesiastical history knows how 
the Church of Christ would have surely become converted into a 
mere rational school, under the pressure of these doctrines, were 
it not for the promises of perpetuity which she had received. 



PEEPAKATION" FOR CHRISTIAMTy. 67 

"We know also what a time it took to establish truth : how 
many councils had to meet, how many books had to be written, 
the efforts required from the rulers of the Church, chiefly from 
the Roman pontiffs, to calm so many storms, to explain so many 
difficult points of doctrine, to secure the final victory. 

And, after all had been accomplished, there still remained the 
root of the evil engrafted in what we call the philosophical turn 
of mind of the Western nations — that is to say, in the disposi- 
tion to call every thing in question, to seek out strange and novel 
difficulties, to start war-provoking theories in the midst of peace, 
to aim at founding a new school, or at least to stand forth as the 
brilliant and startling expounder of old doctrines in a new form, 
in fine to add a last name to the list, already over-long, of those 
who have disturbed the world by their, skill in dialectics and 
sophism. 

Pelagius followed Arius, and his errors had the same object 
in view in the long-run, to strip our holy religion of all that is 
spiritual and divine. 

In the time of St. Augustine and St. Jerome, there existed 
among Christians an extraordinary tendency to embrace all pos- 
sible philosophical doctrines, even when directly opposed to the 
first principles of revealed religion ; and, within the Church, the 
danger of subtilizing on every question connected with well- 
known dogmas was much greater than many imagine. 

From the previous reflections we may learn how difficult it 
was to establish, in pagan Europe, a thoroughly Christian life 
and doctrine ; and that, after society had come to be apparently 
imbued with the new spirit, it was still too easy to disturb the 
flowing stream of the heavenly graces of the' Gospel. This re- 
sulted, we repeat, from causes anterior to (vhristianity, from 
sources of evil which the divine religion had to overcome, and 
which too often impeded its supernatural action. In fact, the 
ecclesiastical history of those ages is comprised mainly in depict- 
ing the almost continual deviations from the straight line of pure 
doctrine and morality, and the strenuous efforts assiduously 
made by the rulers of the Church against a never-ceasing falling 
away. 

Having taken this glance at the early workings of Christianity 
through the rest of the world, we may now turn fsiirlfy to the 
immediate subject we have in hand, and trace its course in Ire- 
land. Erom the very beginning we are struck by the peculiari- 
ties — ^blessed, indeed — which show themselves, as in all other 
matters, in its reception of the truth. The island, compared 
Avith Europe, is small, it is true ; but the heroism displayed by 
its inhabitants during so many ages, in support of the religion 
which they received so freely, so generously, and at once, in 
mind as well as heart, marks it out as worthy of a special account ; 



68 PEEPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

and, from its unique reception and adherence to tlie faith, as 
worthy of, if possible, a natural explanation of such action be- 
yond the promptings of Divine grace, since its astonishing per- 
severance, its unswerving faith, form to-day as great a character- 
istic of the nation as they did on the day of its entry into the 
Christian Church. 

We proceed to examine, then, the kind of idolatry which its 
first apostle encountered on landhig in the island, and the ease 
with which it was destroyed, so as to leave behind no poisonous 
shoots of the deadly root of evil. 

In order to understand the religious system of Ireland pre- 
vious to the preaching of the Gospel, we must first take a general 
survey of polytheism, if it can be so called, in all Celtic coun- 
tries, and of the peculiar character which it bore in Ireland 
itself. 

Of old, throughout all countries, religion possessed .certain 
things in common, which belonged to the rites and creeds of all 
nations, and were evidently derived from the j)rimitive traditions 
of mankind, and, consequently, from a true and Divine revela- 
tion. Such were the belief in a golden age, in the fall from a 
happy beginning, in the penalty imposed on sin, which gave a 
reason for great mundane calamities — the Deluge chiefly — the 
memory of which lived in the traditions of almost every nation ; 
in the necessity of prayer and expiatory sacrifice ; in the trans- 
mission of guilt from father to son, expi'essed in all primitive 
legislations, and to this day preserved in the Chinese laws and 
customs ; in the existence of good and bad spirits, whence, most 
probably, arose polytheism ; in the hope of the future regen- 
eration of man, represented in Greece by the beautiful myth of 
Pandora's box ; and, finally, in the doctrine of eternal rewards 
and punishments. 

Each one of these strictly true dogmas underwent more or 
less of alteration in its passage through the various nations of 
antiquity, but was, nevertheless, everywhere preserved in some 
shape or form. 

At what precise epoch did mankind begin wrongfully to in- 
terpret these primitive traditions ? When did the worship of 
idols arise ancl become universal? 'No one can tell precisely. 
All we know for certain is, that a thousand years before Christ 
idolatry prevailed everywhere, and that even the Jewish people 
often fell into this sin, and were only brought back by means of 
punishment to the worship of the true God. 

But if error tainted the whole system of worship among na- 
tions, it difl!ered in the various races of men according to the 
variety of their character. Ferocity or mildness of manners, 
acuteness or obtuseness of understanding, activity or indolence 
of disposition, a burning, a cold, or a temperate climate, a smil- 



PEEPAEATIOIT FOR CHRISTIAmTY. 69 

ing.or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differences of 
temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in- 
finite variety of forms visible in creation, gave to each individual 
religion its proper and characteristic types, which in after-times, 
when truth was brought down from heaven for all, imparted to 
the universal Christian spirit a peculiar outward form in each 
people, an interior adaptation to its peculiar dis|)ositions, des- 
tined in the Divine plan to introduce into the future Catholic 
Church the beautiful variety requisite to make its very univer- 
sality possible among m,ankind. 

To enter into details on the Celtic religion would carry us 
beyond due limits. The question as to whether the ancient 
Celts were idolaters or not still remains undecided, though in 
France alone more than six hundred volumes have been written 
on the subject. Julius Csesar believed that they were worship- 
pers of idols in the same sense as his own countrymen ; but he 
probably stood alone in his opinion. Aristotle, Pythagoras, 
Polyhistor, Ammianus Marcellinus, considered the Druids as 
monotheist philosophers. Most of the Greek writers agreed with 
them, as did all the Alexandrian Fathers of the Church in the 
third and fourth centuries. 

Among the moderns the majority leans to a contrary opin- 
ion ; nevertheless, many authors of weight, distinguishing the 
public worship of the common people from the doctrine of the 
Druids, assert the monotheism of this sacerdotal caste. Samuel 
P. 1!^. Morus particularly, who, with J. A. Ernesti, was esteemed 
the master of antiquarian scholarship in Europe during the last 
century, maintains, in his edition of the " Commentaries " of 
Csesar, that " human beings, as well as human affairs, fortunes, 
travels, and wars, were thought by the Celts to be governed and 
ruled by one supreme God, and that the system of apotheosis, 
common to nearly all ancient nations, was totally unknown in 
ancient Gaul, Britain, and the adjacent islands." 

The ancient authorities concurring with these conclusions are 
so numerous and clear spoken that the great historian of Gaul, 
Amedee Thierry, thinks that such a pure and mystic religion, 
joined to such a sublime philosophy, could not have been the 
product of the soil. In his endeavor to investigate its origin, he 
supposes that it was brought to the west of Europe by the East- 
ern Cymris of the first invasion ; that it was adopted by the 
higher classes of society, and that the old idolatrous worship re- 
mained in force among the lower orders. 

The unity and omnipotence of the Godhead, metempsychosis, 
or the doctrine of the transmigration of souls — not into the 
bodies of animals, as it obtained and still obtains in the East, 
but into those of other human beings — the eternal duration of 
existing substances, material and spiritual, consequently the im- 



70 PEEPARATIOE" FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

mortality of tlie human soul, were tlie chief dogmas of the Druids, 
according to the majority of antiquarians. 

If this be true, then it can be said boldly that, with the ex- 
ception of revealed religion in Judea, which was always far more 
explicit and pure, no system can be found in ancient times 
superior to that of the Druids, more especially if we add that, 
in addition to religious teaching, a whole system of physics was 
also developed in their large academies. " They dispute," says 
Caesar, " on the stars and their motions, on the size of the uni- 
verse and of this earth, on the nature of physical things, as well 
as on the strength and power of the eternal God." 

To bring our question home, what were the religious belief 
and worship of the Irish Celts while still pagans ? Yery few 
positive facts are known on the subject ; but we have data 
enough to show what they were not ; and in such cases nega- 
tive proofs are amply sufficient. 

It was for a long time the fashion with Irish historians to 
attribute to their ancestors the wildest forms of ancient idolatry. 
They appeared to consider it a point of national honor to make 
the worship of Erin an exact reflex of Eastern, Grecian, or Roman 
polytheism. They erected on the slightest foundations grand 
structures of superstitious and abominable rites. Fire-worship, 
Phoenician or African horrors, the rankest idol-worship, even 
human sacrifices of the most revolting nature, were, according 
to them, of almost daily occurrence in Ireland. But, with the 
advancement of antiquarian knowledge, all those phantoms have 
successively disappeared ; and, the more the ancient customs, 
literature, and history of the island are studied, the more it be- 
comes clear that the pretended proofs adduced in support of those 
vagaries are really without foundation. 

In the first place, there is not the slightest reason to believe 
that the human sacrifices customary in Gaul were ever practised 
in Ireland. 'No really ancient book makes any mention of them. 
They were certainly not in vogue at the time of St. Patrick, as 
he could not have failed to give expression to his horror at them 
in some shape or form, which expression would have been re- 
corded in one, at least, of the many lives of the saint, written 
shortly after his death, and abounding in details of every kind. 
If not, then, during his long apostleship, we may safely conclude 
that they never took place before, as there was no reason for 
their discontinuance prior to the propagation of Christianity. 

There was a time when all the large cromlechs which abound 
in the island were believed to be sacrificial stones ; and it is 
highly probable that the opinion so prevalent during the last 
century with respect to the reality of those cruel rites had its 
origin in the existence of those rude monuments. After many 
investigations and excavations around and under cromlechs of 



PREPARATION" FOR CHRISTIANITY. 71 

all sizes, it. is now admitted loj all well-informed antiquarians 
that they had no connection with sacrifices of any kind. They 
were merely monuments raised over the buried bodies of chief- 
tains or heroes. Many sepulchres of that description have been 
opened, either under cromlechs or under large mounds ; great 
quantities of ornaments of gold, silver, or precious stones, uten- 
sils of various materials, beautiful works of great artistic merit, 
have been discovered there, and now go to fill the museums of 
the nation or private cabinets. J^othing connected with reli- 
gious rites of any description has met the eyes of the learned 
seekers after truth. Thus it has been ascertained that the old 
race had reached a high degree of material civilization ; but no 
clew to its religion has been furnished. 

As to fire-worship, which not long ago was admitted by all 
as certainly forming a part of the Celtic religion in Ireland, so 
little of that opinion remains to-day that it is scarcely deserving 
of mention. There now remains no doubt that the round tow- 
ers, formerly so numerous in Ireland, had nothing whatever to 
do with fire-worship. For a long time they were believed to 
have been constructed for no other object, and consequently 
long prior to the coming of St. Patrick. But Dr. Petrie and 
other antiquarians have all but demonstrated that the round tow- 
ers never had any connection with superstition or idolatry at all ; 
that they were of Christian origin, always built near some Chris- 
tian church, and of the same materials, and had for their object 
to call the faithful to prayer, like the campanile of Italy, to be a 
place of refuge for the clergy in time of war, and to give to dis- 
tant villages intimation of any hostile invasion. 

The fact in the life of St. Patrick, when he appeared before 
the court of King Laeghaire, upon which so much reliance is 
placed as a proof of the existence of fire-worship, is now of pro- 
portionate weakness. It seems, to judge by the most reliable 
and ancient manuscripts, that, after all, the kindling of the king's 
fire was scarcely a religious act. 

McGeoghegan, whose history is compiled from the best-au- 
thenticated documents, says : " When the monarch convened an 
assembly, or held a festival at Tara, it was customary to make a 
bonfire on the preceding day, and it was forbidden to light an- 
other fire in any other place at the same time, in the territory 
of Breagh." 

This is all ; and the probable cause of the prohibition was to 
do honor to the king. Had it been an act of worship, Patrick, 
in lighting his own paschal-fire, would not only have shown dis- 
respect to the monarch, but in the eyes of the people committed 
a sacrilege, which could scarcely have missed mention by the 
careful historians of the time. 

But the proof that we are right in our interpretation of the 



72 PEEPAEATION FOR CHRISTIAlsriTY. 

ceremony is clear, from the folloM;iiig passage, taken from tlie 
work of Prof. Curry on " Early Irisli Manuscripts : " " "We see, 
by tlie book of military expeditions, that, when King Dathi — 
the immediate 23redecessor of Laeghaire on the throne of Ire- 
land — thought of conquering Britain and Gaul, he invited the 
'states of the nation to meet him at Tara, at the approaching 
feast of Baltaine (one of the great pagan festivals of ancient 
Erin) on May-day. 

" The feast of Tara this year was solemnized on a scale of 
splendor never before equalled. The fires of Lailten (now called 
Lelltown in the north of Ireland) were lighted, and the sports, 
games, and ceremonies, were conducted with unusual magnifi- 
cence and solemnity. 

" These games and solemnities are said to have been insti- 
tuted more than a thousand years previously by Lug, in honor 
of Lailte, the daughter of the King of Spain, and wife of Mac- 
Eire, the last king of the Firbolg colony. It was at her court 
that Lug had been fostered, and at her death he had her buried 
at this place, where he raised an immense mound over her grave, 
and instituted those annual games in her honor. 

" These games were solemnized about the first day of Au- 
gust, and they continued to be observed down to the ninth cen 
tury " — therefore, in Christian times — and consequently the 
lighting of the fires had as little connection with fire-worship as 
the games with pagan rites. 

A more serious difficulty meets us in the destruction of Crom 
Cruagh by St. Patrick, and it is important to consider how far 
Crom Cruagh could really be called an idol. 

With regard to the statues of Celtic gods, all the researches 
and excavations which the most painstaking of antiquarians have 
undertaken, especially of late years, have never resulted in the 
discovery, not of the statue of a god, but of any pagan sign 
whatever in Ireland. It is clear, from the numerous details of 
the life of St. Patrick, that he never encountered either temples 
or the statues of gods in any place, although occasional mention 
is made of idols. The only fact which startles the reader is the 
holy zeal which moved him to strike with his "baculus Jesu" 
the monstrous Crom Cruagh, with its twelve " sub-gods." 

In all his travels through Ireland — and there is scarcely a 
spot which he did not visit and evangelize — St. Patrick meets 
with only one idol, or rather group of idols, situated in the 
County Cavan, which was an object of veneration to the people. 
Nowhere else are idols to be found, or the saint would have 
thought it his duty to destroy them also. This first fact cer- 
tainly places the Irish in a position, with regard to idolatry, far 
different from that of all other polytheist nations. In all other 
countries it is characteristic of polytheism to multiply the stat- 



PEEPAEATION FOE CHRISTIANITY. 73 

ues of the gods, to expose thein in all public places, in their 
houses, but chiefly within or at the cloor of edifices erected for the 
purpose. Yet in Ireland we find nothing of the kind, with the 
exception of Crom Cruagh. The holy apostle of the nation goes 
on preaching, baptizing, converting people, without finding any 
worship of gods of stone or metal ; he only hears that there is 
something of the kind in a particular spot, and he has to travel 
a great distance in order to see it, and show the people their folly 
in venerating it. 

But what was that idol ? According to the majority of ex- 
pounders of Irish history, it Avas a golden sphere or ball repre- 
senting the sun, with twelve cones or pillars of brass around it, 
typifying, probably, astronomical signs. St. Patrick, in his 
" Confessio," seems to allude to Crom Cruagh when he says : 
" That sun which we behold by the fovor of God rises for us 
every day ; but its splendor will not shine forever ; nay, even 
all those who adore it shall be miserably punished." 

The Bollandists, in a note on this passage of the " Confes- 
sio," think that it might refer to Crom Cruagh, which possibly 
represented the sun, surrounded by the signs of the twelve 
months, through which it describes its orbit during the year. 

We know that the Druids were, perhaps, better versed in the 
science of astronomy than the scholars of any other nation at the 
time. It was not in Gaul and Britain only that they pursued 
their course of studies for a score of years ; the same fact is at- 
tested for Ireland by authorities whose testimony is beyond 
question. May we not suppose that a representation of mere 
heavenly phenomena, set in a conspicuous position, had in course 
of time become the object of the superstitious veneration of the 
people, and that St. Patrick thought it his duty to destroy it ? 
And the attitude of the people at the time of its destruction 
shows that it could not have borne for them the same sacred 
character as the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon did for the 
Greeks or that of Capitoline Jove for the Komans. Can we 
suppose that St. Paul or St. Peter would have dared to break 
either of these ? And let us remark that the event we discuss 
occurred at the very beginning of St. Patrick's ministry, and 
before he had yet acquired that great authority over the minds 
of all which afterward enabled him fearlessly to accomplish what- 
ever his zeal prompted him to do. 

Whatever explanation of the whole occurrence may be given, 
we doubt if we shall find a better than that we advance, and the 
considerations arising from it justify the opinion that the Irish 
Celts were not idolaters like all other peoples of antiquity. They 
possessed no mythology beyond harmless fairy-tales, no poetical 
histories of gods and goddesses to please the imagination and 
the senses, and invest paganism with such an attractive garb as 



74: PEEPARATION FOR OHRISTIAmiY. 

to cause it to become a real obstacle to tbe spread of Cbris- 
tianity. 

Moreover, what we have said concerning the belief in the 
omnipotence of one supreme God, whatever might be his nature, 
as the first dogma of Druidism, would seem to have lain deep in 
the minds of the Irish Celts, and caused their immediate com- 
prehension and reception of monotheism, as preached by St. 
Patrick, and the facility with which they accepted it. They 
were certainly, even when pagans, a very religious people ; 
otherwise how could they have embraced the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity with that ardent eagerness which shall come under our 
consideration in the next chapter ? A nation utterly devoid of 
faith of any kind is not apt to be moved, as were the Irish, per- 
haps beyond all other nations, at the first sight of supernatural 
truths, such as those of Christianity. And so little were they 
attached to paganism, so visibly imbued with reverence for the 
supreme God of the universe, that, as soon as announced, they 
accepted the dogma. 

The simple and touching story of the conversion of the two 
daughters of King Laeghaire will give point and life to this very 
important consideration. It is taken from the " Book of Ar- 
magh," which Prof. O' Curry, who is certainly a competent 
authority, believes older than the year 727, when the popular 
Irish traditions reo-arding- St. Patrick must have still been almost 
as vivid as immediately after his death. 

St. Patrick and his attendants being assembled at sunrise at 
the fountain of Clebach, near Cruachan in Connaught, Ethne 
and Pelimia, daughters of King Laeghaire, came to bathe, and 
found at the well the holy men. 

" And they knew not whence they were, or in what form, or 
from what people, or from what country ; but they supposed 
them to be fairies — duine sidhS — that is to say, gods of the 
earth, or a phantasm. 

" And the virgins said unto them : ' Who are ye, and whence 
are ye ? ' 

" And Patrick said unto them : ' It were better for you to 
confess to our true God, than to inquire concerning our race.' 

" The first virgin said : ' Who is God ? 

" ' And where is God ? 

" ' And where is his dwelling-place ? 

" ' Has God sons and daughters, gold and silver ? 

" ' Is he living ? 

" ' Is he beautiful ? 

" ' Did many foster his son ? 

" ' Are his daughters dear and beauteous to men of this 
world ? 

"' Is he in heaven or on earth ? 



PEEPAEATIOI^ FOR CHRISTIANITY. 75 

"'In the sea?^Iii rivers? — In mountainous places? — In 
valleys ? " 

" ' Declare unto us the knowledge of him ? 

" ' How shall he be seen ? — How shall he be loved ? — How is 
he to be found ? 

" ' Is it in youth ? — Is it in old age that he is to be found ? ' 

" But St. Patrick, full of the Holy Ghost, answered and said : 

" ' Our God is the God of all men — the God of heaven and 
earth — of the sea and rivers. The God of the sun, and the 
moon, and all stars. The God of the high mountains, and of the 
lowly valleys. The God who is above heaven, and in heaven, 
and under heaven. 

" ' He has a habitation in the heavens, and the earth, and the 
sea, and all that are thereon. 

" ' He inspireth all things. He quickeneth all things. He 
is over all things. 

" ' He hath a Son coeternal and coequal with himself. The 
Son is not younger than the Father, nor the Father older than 
the Son. And the Holy Ghost breatheth in them. The Father, 
and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are not divided. 

" ' But I desire to unite you to a heavenly King inasmuch 
as you are daughters of an earthly king. Do you believe ? ' 

"And the virgins said, as of one mouth and one heart: 
' Teach us most diligently how we may believe in the heavenly 
King. Show us how we may see him face to face, and whatso- 
ever you shall say unto us we will do.' 

" And Patrick said : ' Believe ye that by baptism you put off 
the sin of your father and your mother ? ' 

" They answered him, ' We believe.' 

" ' Believe ye in repentance after sin ? ' ' We believe . . .' etc. 

" And they were baptized, and a white garment was put 
upon their heads. And they asked to see the face of Christ. 
And the saint said unto them : ' Ye cannot see the face of Christ 
except ye taste of death, and except ye receive the sacrifice.' 

" And they answered : ' Give us the sacrifice that we may 
behold the Son our spouse.' 

" And they received the eucharist of God, and they slept in 
death. 

" And they were laid out on one bed — covered with garments 
— and their friends made great lamentations and weeping for 
them." 

This beautiful legend expresses to the letter the way in 
which the Irish received the faith. 'Nor was it simple virgins 
only who understood and Relieved so suddenly at the preaching 
of the apostle. The great men of the nation were as eager 
almost as the common people to receive baptism : the conver- 
sion of Dubtach is enough to show this. 



76 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

He was a Druid, being tlie cliief poet of King Laegliaire — all 
poets belonging to tlie order. After the wife, the brothers, and 
the two daughters of the monarch, he was the most illustrious 
3onvert gained by Patrick at the beginning of his apostleship. 
He became a Christian at the first appearance of the saint at 
Tara, and immediately began to sing in verse his new belief, as 
he had formerly sung the heroes of his nation. To the end he 
remained firm in his faith, and a dear friend to the holy man 
who had converted him. How could he, and all the chief con- 
verts of Patrick, have believed so suddenly and so constantly in 
the God of the Christians, if their former life had not prepared 
them for the adoption of the new doctrine, and if the doctrine 
of monotheism had offered a real difficulty to their understand- 
ing? There was, probably, nothing clear and definite in their 
belief in an omnipotent Grod, which is said to have been the 
leading dogma of Druidism ; but their simple minds had evi- 
dently a leaning toward the doctrine, which induced them to 
approve of it, as soon as it was presented to them with a solemn, 
affirmation. 

In order to elucidate this point, we add a short description 
of the labors and success of this apostle. 

In the year 432, Patrick lands on the island. By that time, 
some few of the inhabitants may possibly have heard of the 
Christian religion from the neighboring Britain or Gaul. Palla- 
dius had preached the year before in the district known as the 
present counties of Wexford and Wicklow, erected three churches, 
and made some converts ; but it may be said that Ireland con- 
tinued in the same state it had preserved for thousands of years : 
the Druids in possession of religious and scientific supremacy ; 
the chieftains in contention, as in the time of Fingal and Ossian ; 
the people, though in the midst of constant strife, happy enough 
on their rich soil, cheered by their bards and poets ; very few, or 
no slaves in the country; an abundance of food everywhere; 
gold," silver, precious stones, adorning profusely the persons of 
their chiefs, their wives, their warriors ; rich stufli's, dyed with 
many colors, to distinguish the various orders of society ; a deep 
religious feeling in their hearts, preparing them for the faith, by 
inspiring them with lively emotions at the sight of divine power 
displayed in their mountains, their valleys, their lakes and riv- 
ers, and on the swelling bosom of the all-encircling ocean ; su- 
perstitions of various kinds, indeed, but none of a demoralizing 
character, none involving marks of cruelty or lust ; no revolting 
statues of Priapus, of Bacchus, of Cybele ; no obscene emblems 
of religion, as in all other lands, to confront Christianity ; but 
over all the island, song, festivity, deep afiection for kindred ; 
and, as though blood-relationship could not satisfy their heart, 
fosterage covering the land with other brothers and sisters ; all 



PEEPAEATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 77 

permeated witli a strong attacliment to their clan-system and so- 
cial customs. Such is an exact picture of the Erin of the time, 
which the study of antiquity brings clearer and clearer before the 
eyes of the modern student. 

Patrick appears among them, leaning on his staff, and bring- 
ing them from Rome and Gaul new songs in a new language set 
to a new melody. He comes to unveil for them what lies hid- 
den, unknown to themselves, in the depths of their hearts. He 
explains, by the power of one Supreme God, why it is that their 
mountains are so high, their valleys so smiling, their rivers and 
lakes teeming with life, their fountains so fresh and cool, and 
that sun of theirs so temperate in its warmth, and the moon and 
stars, lighted with a soft radiance, shimmering over the deep 
obscurity of their groves. 

He directs them to look into their own consciences, to admit 
themselves to be sinners in need of redemption, and points out 
to them in what manner that Supreme God, whom they half 
knew already, condescended to save man. 

Straightway, from all parts of the island, converts flock to 
him ; they come in crowds to be baptized, to embrace the new 
law by which they may read their own hearts ; they are ready to 
do whatever he wishes ; many, not content with the strict com- 
mandments enjoined on all, wish to enter on the path of perfec- 
tion : the men become monks, the women and young girls nuns, 
that is to say, spouses of Christ. In Munster alone " it would be 
difficult," says a modern writer, Father Brenan, " to form an 
estimate of the number of converts he made, and even of the 
churches and religious establishments he founded." 

And so with all the other provinces of the island. The 
proofs still stand before our eyes. For, as Prof. Curry justly 
remarks : '* ^o one, who examines for himself, can doubt that at 
the iirst preaching in Erin of the glad tidings of salvation, by 
Saints Pailadius and Patrick, those countless Christian churches 
were built, whose sites and ruins mark so thickly the surface of 
our country even to this day, still bearing through all the vicis- 
situdes of time and conquest the unchanged names of their origi- 
nal founders^ 

According to the commonly-received opinion, St. Patrick's 
apostleship lasted thirty-three years ; but, whatever may have 
been its real duration, certain it is that his feet traversed the 
whole island several times, and, at his passing, churches and mon- 
asteries sprang up in great numbers, and remained to tell the 
true story of his labors when their founder had passed away. 

Nor was it with Ireland as with Rome, Carthage, Antioch, 
and other great cities of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Not the slaves 
and artisans alone filled these newly-erected Christian edifices. 
Some of the first men of the nation received baptism. We have 



78 PEEPAEATION TOR CHRISTIANITY. 

already spoken of the family of Laegliaire. In Connanglit, at 
the first appearance of the man of God, all the inhabitants of 
that portion of the province now represented by the Connty 
Mayo became Christians ; and the seven sons of the king of the 
province were baptized, together with twelve thousand of their 
clansmen. In Leinster, the Princes Illand and Alind were bap- 
tized in a fountain near Naas. In Mnnster, Aengus, the King 
of Cashel, with all the nobility of his clan, embraced the faith. 
A nnmber of chieftains in Thomond are also mentioned ; and 
the whole of the Dalcassian tribe, so celebrated before and after 
in the annals of Ireland, received, with the waters of baptism, 
that ardent faith which nothing has been able to tear from them 
to this day. 

Many Druids even, by renouncing their superstitions, abdi- 
cated their power over the people. We have mentioned Dub- 
tach ; his example was followed by many others, among whom 
was Fingar, the son of King Clito, who is said to have snifered 
martyrdom in Brittany ; Fiech, pupil of Dubtach, himself a 
poet, and belonging to the noble house of Hy-Baircha in Lein- 
ster, was raised by St. Patrick to the episcopacy, and was the first 
occupant of the See of Sletty. 

Fiech was a regular member of the bardic order of Druids, a 
poet by profession, esteemed as a learned man even before he 
embraced Christianity ; and during his lifetime he was, as a 
Christian bishop, consulted by numbers and regarded as an ora- 
cle of truth and heavenly wisdom. 

l!Tevertheless, Patrick encountered opposition. Some chief- 
tains declared themselves against him, without daring openly to 
attack him. Many Druids, called in the old Irish annals magi, 
tried their utmost to estrange the Irish people from him. But 
he stood in danger of his life only once. It was, in fact, a war 
of argument. Long discussions took place, with varied success, 
ending generally, however, in a victory for truth. 

The final result was that, in the second generation after St. 
Patrick, there existed not a single pagan in the whole of Ire- 
land ; the very remembrance of paganism even seemed to have 
passed away from their minds ever after ; hence arises the diffi- 
culty of deciding now on the character of that paganism. 

After its abolition, nothing remained in the literature of the 
country, which was at that time much more copious than at 
present — ^nothing was left in its monuments or in the inclina- 
tions of the people — to imperil the existence of the newly-estab- 
lished Christianity, or of a nature calculated to give a wrong 
bias to the religious worship of the people, such as we have seen 
was the case in the rest of Europe. 

May we not conclude, then, that Ireland was much better 
prepared for the new religion than any other country ; that, 



PEEPAEATIOF FOR CHEISTIANITY. 79 

wlien she was thus admitted by baptism into the European 
family, she made her entry in a way peculiar to herself, and 
which secured to her, once for all, her firm and undeviating at- 
tachment to truth ? 

She had nothing to change in her manners after having 
renounced the few disconnected superstitions to which she had 
been addicted. Her songs, her bards, her festivities, her patri- 
archal government, her fosterage, were left to her, Christianized 
and consecrated by her great apostle ; clanship even penetrated 
into the monasteries, and gave rise later on to some abuses. 
But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allow the existence 
of things which might lead to abuse than violently and at once 
to subvert customs, rooted by age in the very nature of the 
people, some of which it cost England, later on, centuries of in- 
conceivable barbarities to eradicate. 

As to what exact form, if any, the paganism of the Irish 
Celts assumed, we have so few data to build upon that it is now 
next to impossible to shape a system out of them. From the 
passage of the " Confessio " already quoted, we might infer that 
they adored the sun ; and this passage is very remarkable as the 
only mention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among 
the people. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, 
then would there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship ; 
and the strong terms in which the saint condemns it perhaps 
need only express his fear lest the superstition of the ignorant 
people might convert veneration into positive idolatry. At all 
events, there was not a statue, or a temple, or a theological sys- 
tem, erected to or connected with it in any shape. 

The solemn forms of oaths taken and administered by the 
Irish kings would also lead us to infer that they paid a supersti- 
tious respect to the winds and the other elements. But why 
should this feeling pass beyond that which even the Christian 
experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well 
as the supernatural order ? The awe-struck pagan saw the light- 
ning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic 
fury ; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean which laved or 
lashed his shores : he witnessed these wonderful effects ; he knew 
not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or the voice of 
the ocean ; he trembled at the unseen power which moved them 
— at his God. 

So his imagination peopled his groves and hill-sides, his 
rivers and lakes, with harmless fairies ; but fairy land has never 
become among any nation a pandemonium of cruel divinities ; 
and we doubt much if such innocuous superstition can be rightly 
called even sinful error. 

In fact, the only thing which could render paganism truly a 
danger in Ireland, as opposed to the preaching of Christianity, 



80 PREPARATIOF FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

was tlie body of men intrusted with, the care of religion — the 
Druids, the magi of the chronicle's. But, as we find no traces 
of bloodj sacrifices in Ireland, the Druids there probably never 
bore the character which they did in Ganl ; they cannot be said 
to have been sacrificing priests ; their ofiice consisted merely in 
pretended divinations, or the workings of incantations or spells. 
They also introduced superstition into the practice of medicine, 
and taught the people to venerate the elements or mysterious 
forces of this world. 

Without mentioning any of the many instances which are 
found in the histories of the workings of these Druidical incan- 
tations and spells, the consulting of the clouds, and the cere- 
monies with which they surrounded their healing art, we go 
straight to our main point : the ease and suddenness with which 
all these delusions vanished at the first preaching of the Gospel 
— a fact very telling on the force which they exercised over 
the mind of the nation. All natural customs, games, festivities, 
social relationships, as we have seen, are preserved, many to this 
day ; what is esteemed as their religion, and its ceremonies and 
superstitions, is dropped kt once. The entire Irish mind ex- 
panded freely and generously at the simple announcement of a 
God, present everywhere in the universe, and accepted it. The 
dogma of the Holy Spirit, not only filling all — complens omnia — 
but dwelling in their very souls by grace, and filling them with 
love and fear, must have appeared natural to them. Their very 
superstitions must have prepared the way for the truth, a change 
— or may we not say a more direct and tangible object taking 
the place of and filling their undefined yearnings — was alone 
requisite. Otherwise it is a hard fact to explain how, within a 
few years, all Druidism and magic, incantations, spells, and divi- 
nations, were replaced by pure religion, by the doctrine of celes- 
tial favors obtained through prayer, by the intercession of a host 
of saints in heaven, and the belief in Christian miracles and 
prophecies ; whereas, scarcely any thing of Koman or Grecian 
mythology could be replaced by corresponding Christian prac- 
tices, although popes did all they could in that regard. ITearly 
all the errors of the Irish Celts had their corresponding truths 
and holy practices in Christianity, which could be readily substi- 
tuted for them, and envelop them immediately with distrust or 
just oblivion. Hence we do not see, in the subsequent ecclesi- 
astical history of Ireland, any thing to resemble the short sketch 
we have given of the many dangers arising within the young 
Christian Church, which had their origin in the former religion 
of other European nations. 

In regarding philosophy and its perils in Ireland, our task 
will be an easy one, yet not unimportant in its bearings on sub- 
sequent considerations. The minds of nations differ as greatly 



PEEPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 81 

as their physical characteristics ; and to study the Irish mind we 
have only to take into consideration the institutions which swayed 
it from time immemorial. They were of such a nature that they 
could but belong to a traditional people. All patriarchal tribes 
partake of that general character ; none, perhaps, so strikingly 
as the Celts. 

People thus disposed have nothing rationalistic in their 
nature ; they accept old facts ; and, if they reason upon them, it 
is to find proofs to support, not motives to doubt them. They 
never refine their discussions to hair-splitting, synonymous al- 
most with rejection, as seems to be the delight of what we call 
rationalistic races. It was among these that philosophy was born, 
and among them it flourishes. They may, by their acute reason- 
ing, enlarge the human mind, open up new horizons, and, if 
confined within just limits, actually enrich the understanding of 
man. We are far "from pretending that philosophy has only been 
productive of harm, and that it were a blessed thing had the 
human intellect always remained, as it were, in a dormant state, 
without ever striving to grasp at philosophic truth and raise 
itself above the common level ; we hold the great names, of 
Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and so many others, in 
too great respect to entertain such an opinion. 

Yet it cannot be denied that the excessive study of philoso- 
phy has produced many evils among men, has often been subser- 
vient to error, has, at best, been for many minds the source of a 
cold and desponding skepticism. 

No race of men, perhaps, has been less inclined to follow 
those intellectual aberrations than the Celtic, owing chiefly to 
its eminently traditional dispositions. 

Before Christianity reached them, the intellectual labors of 
the Celts were chiefly confined to history and genealogy, medi- 
cine and botany, law, song, music, and artistic workings in met- 
als and gems. This was the usual curriculum of Druidic studies. 
Astronomy and the physical sciences, as well as the knowledge 
of " the nature of the eternal God," were, according to Csesar, 
extensively studied in the Gallic schools. Some elements of 
those intellectual pursuits may also have occupied the attention 
of the Irish student during the twelve, fifteen, or twenty years 
of his preparation for being ordained to the highest degree of 
ollamli. But the oldest and most reliable documents which 
have been examined so far do not allow us to state positively 
that such was the case to any great extent. 

In Christian times, however, it seems certain that astronomy 
was better studied in Ireland than anywhere else, as is proved 
by the extraordinary impulse given to that science by Yirgil of 
Salzburg, who was undoubtedly an Irishman, and educated in 
his native country. 
6 



82 PREPAEATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 

It is from the Churcli alone,, therefore, that they received 
their highest intellectual training in the philosophy and theology 
of the Scriptures and of the Fathers. It is known that, by the 
introduction of the Latin and Greek tongues into their schools 
in addition to the vernacular, the Bible in Latin and Greek, and 
the writings of many Fathers in both languages, as also the most 
celebrated works of Roman and Greek classical writers, became 
most interesting subjects of study. They reproduced those 
works for their own use in the scriptoria of their numerous 
monasteries. We still possess some of those manuscripts of the 
sixth and following centuries, and none more beautiful or correct 
can be found among those left by the English, French, or Italian 
monastic institutions of the periods mentioned. 

Daring the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, the Irish 
schools became celebrated all over Europe. Young Anglo-Sax- 
ons of the best families were sent to receive their education in 
Innisfail, as the island was then often called; and, from their 
celebrated institutions of learning, numerous teachers and mis- 
sionaries went forth to England, Germany (along the Ehine, 
chiefly), France, and even Switzerland and Italy. 

Yet, in tlie history of all those intellectual labors, we never 
read of startling theories in philosophy or theology advanced by 
any of them, unless we except the eccentric John Scotus -Erige- 
na, whom Charles the Bald, at whose court he resided, protect- 
ed even against the just severity of the Church. Without ever 
having studied theology, he undertook to dogmatize, and would 
perhaps have originated some heresy, had he found a following 
in Germany or France. 

But he is the only Irishman who ever threatened the peace 
of the Church, and, through her, of the world. Duns Scotus, if 
he were Irish, never taught any error, and remained always an 
accepted leader in Catholic schools. To the honor of Erin be it 
said, her children have ever been afraid to deviate in the least 
from the path of faith. And it would be wrong to imagine that 
the preservation from heresy so peculiar to them, and by which 
they are broadly distinguished from all other European nations, 
comes from dulness of intellect and inability to follow out an 
intricate argumentation. They show the acuteness of their un- 
derstanding in a thousand ways ; in poetry, in romantic tales, 
in narrative compositions, in legal acumen and extempore argu- 
ments, in the study of medicine, chiefly in that masterly elo- 
quence by which so many of them are distinguished. Who shall 
say that they might not also have reached a high degree of 
eminence in philosophical discussions and ontological theories % 
They have always abstained from such studies by reason of a 
natural disinclination, which does them honor, and which has 
saved them in modern times, as we shall see in a subsequent 



PREPARATIOIT FOE CHRISTIANITY. 83 

chapter, from tlie inniimerable evils which afflict society every- 
where else, and by which it is even threatened with destruction. 

Thus, among the nmnerons and versatile progeny of Japhet, 
one small branch has kept itself aloof from the universal move- 
ment of the whole family ; and, in the very act of accepting 
Christianity and taking a place in the commonwealth of Western 
nations, it has known how to do so in its own manner, and has 
thus secured a firm hold of the saving doctrines imparted to the 
whole race for a great purpose — the purpose, unfortunately often 
defeated — of reducing to practice and reality the sublime ideal of 
the Christian religion. 

The details given in this chapter on the various circumstances 
connected with the introduction of our holy faith into Ireland 
were necessarily very limited, as our chief object was to speak 
of the nation's preparation for it. In the following we treat 
directly of what could only be touched upon in the latter part 
of this. 



CHAPTER lY. 

HOW THE IRISH EECEWED CHEISTIANITY. 

Foe the conversion of pagans to Christianity, many exterior 
proofs of revelation were vouchsafed by God to man in addition 
to the interior impulse of his grace. Those exterior proofs are 
generally termed "the evidences of religion." They produce 
their chief effect on inquiring minds which are familiar with the 
reasoning processes of philosophy, and attach great importance 
to truth acquired by logical deduction. To this, many pagans 
of Greece and Rome owed their conversion ; by this, in our days, 
many strangers are brought, on reflection, to the faith of Christ, 
always presupposing the paramount influence of divine grace on 
their minds and hearts. 

But it is easy to remark that, except in rare eases, those who 
are gained over to truth by such a process are with some diffi- 
culty brought under the influence of the supernatural, which 
forms the essential groundwork of Christianity. This influ- 
ence, it is true, is only the eftect of the operation of the Holy 
Ghost on the soul of the convert ; but the Holy Ghost acts in 
conformity with the disposition of the soul; and we know, by 
what has been said on the character of religion among the Ro- 
mans and the Greeks in the earlier days of the Church, that it 
took long ages, the infusion of I^orthern blood, and the sim- 
plicity of new races uncontaminated by heathen mythology, to 
inspire men with that deep supernatural feeling which in course 
of time became the distinguishing character of the ages of faith. 
Ireland imbibed this feeling at once, and thus she received Chris- 
tianity more thoroughly, at the very beginning, than did any 
other Western nation. 

The fact is — whatever may be thought or said — the Christian 
religion, with all the loveliness it imparts to this world when 
rightly understood, though never destroying l^ature, but always 
keeping it in mind, and consecrating it to God, ti-uly endowed, 
consequently, with the promises of earth as well as those of 
heaven — the Christian religion is nevertheless fundamentally su- 



KE0EPTIO2T OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 

pernatural, fall of awe and mystery, heavenly and incomprehen- 
sible, before being earthly and the grateful object of sense. 

Without examining the various formularies which heresy 
compelled an infallible Church to proclaim and impose upon her 
chiklren from time to time, the Apostles' Creed alone transfers 
man at once into regions supernatural, into heaven itself. The 
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the mission of the 
Holy Ghost on earth, the communion of saints, the forgiveness 
of sins, and the resurrection of the dead, are all mysteries neces- 
sitating a revelation on the part of God himself to make them 
known to and believed by man. Do they not place man, even 
while on earth, in direct communication with heaven ? 

The firm believer in those mysteries is already a celestial citi- 
zen by faith and hope. He has acquired a new life, new senses, 
as it were, new faculties of mind and will — all things, evidently, 
above ]^ature. 

And it is clear, from many passages of the ISTew Testament, 
that our Lord wished the lives of his disciples to be wholly pene- 
trated with that supernatural essence. They were not to be men 
of the earth, earthly, but citizens of another country which is 
heavenly and eternal. Hence the holiness and perfection re- 
quired of them — a holiness, according to Christ, like that of the 
celestial Father himself ; hence contempt for the things of this 
world, so strongly recommended by our Lord ; hence the assur- 
ance that men are called to be sons of God, the eternal Son hav- 
ing become incarnate to acquire for us this glorious privilege ; 
hence, finally, that frequent recommendation in the Gospel to 
rely on God for the things of this life, and to look above all for 
spiritual blessings. 

That reliance is set forth in such terms, in the Sermon on the 
Mount, that, taken literally, man should neglect entirely his tem- 
poral advantages, forget entirely Nature, and think only of grace, 
or rather, expect that the things of ISTature would be given us by 
our heavenly Father " who knows that we need them." 

Kature, consequently, assumes a new aspect in this system. 
It is no longer a complexity of temporal goods within reach of 
the efforts of man, and which it rests with man alone to procure 
for himself. It is, indeed, a worldly treasure, belonging to God, 
as all else, and which the hand of God scatters profusely among 
his creatures. God will not fail to grant to every one what he 
needs, if he have faith. Thus God is always visible in IsTature ; 
and redeemed man, raised far above the beasts of the field, has 
other eyes than those of the body, when he looks around him on 
this world. 

Had Christianity been literally understood by those who first 
received it, it would have completely changed the moral, social, 
and even natural aspect of the universe. The change produced 



86 EECEPTION OF CHEISTIANITY. 

tliroiigliout by the new religion was indeed remarkable, but not 
what it wonld have been, if the supernatural had taken complete 
possession of human society. This it did in Ireland, and, it may 
be said, in Ireland alone. 

To begin with the preaching of St. Patrick, we note his care 
to impart to his converts a sufficient knowledge of the Christian 
mysteries, but, above all, to make those mysteries influence their 
lives by acting more powerfully on the new Christian heart than 
even on the mind. 

Thus, in the beautiful legend of Ethne and Felimia, the saint, 
not content with instructing them on the attributes of God, the 
Trinity, and other supernatural truths, goes further still ; he re- 
quires a change in their whole being — that . it be spiritualized : 
by deeply exciting their feelings, by speaking of Christ as their 
spouse, by making them wish to receive him in the holy Eucha- 
rist, even at the expense of their temporal life, he so raises them 
above Nature that they actually asked to die. "And they re- 
ceived the Eucharist of God, and they slept in death." 

Again, in the hymn of Tara, the heavenly spirit, which con- 
sists in an intimate union with God and Christ, is so admirably 
expressed, that we cannot refrain from presenting an extract 
from it, remarking that this beautiful hymn has been the great 
prayer of all Irishmen through all ages down even to our own 
times, though, unfortunately, it is not now so generally Iniown 
and used by them as formerly : 

"At Tara, to-day, may the strength of God pilot me, may 
the power of God preserve me, may the wisdom of God instruct 
me, may the eye of God view me, may the ear of God hear me, 
may the word of God render me eloquent, may the hand of God 
protect me, may the way of God direct me, may the shield of 
God defend me, etc. 

" Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ 
in me, Christ under me, Christ over me, Christ at my right, Christ 
at my left ; . . . Christ be in the heart of each person whom I 
speak to, Christ in the mouth of each person who speaks to me, 
Christ in each eye which sees me, Christ in each ear which hears 
me ! '' 

Could any thing tend more powerfully to make of those whom 
he converted, true supernatural Christians — forgetful of this 
world, thinking only of another and a brighter one ? 

The island, at his coming, was a prey to preternatural super- 
stitions. The Druids possessed, in the opinion of the people, a 
power beyond that of man ; and history shows the same phenome- 
non in all pagan countries, not excepting those of our time. A 
real supernatural power was required to overcome that of the magi. 

Hence, according to Probus, the magicians to whom the ar- 
rival of Patrick had been foretold, prepared themselves for the 



EEOEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 87 

contest, and several cliieftains supported tliem. Prestiges were, 
therefore, tried in antagonism to miracles ; but, as Moses pre- 
vailed over the power of the Egyptian priests, so did Patrick 
over the Celtic magicians. It is even said that five Druids per- 
ished in one of the contests. 

The princes were sometimes also punished with death. Ee- 
craid, head of a clan, came with his Druids and with words of 
incantation written under his white garments ; he fell dead. 
Laeghaire himself, the Ard-Righ of all Ireland, whose family be- 
came Christian, but who refused to abandon his superstitions, 
perished with his numerous attendants. 

But a more singular phenomenon was, that death, which was 
often the punishment of unbelief, became as often a boon to be 
desired by the new Christian converts, so completely were they 
under the influence of the supernatural. Thus Puis found it 
hard to believe. To strengthen his faith, Patrick restored to 
him his youth, and then gave him the choice between this sweet 
blessing of life and the happiness of heaven ; Puis preferred to 
die, like Ethne and Eelimia. 

Sechnall, the bard, told St. Patrick, one day, that he wished 
to sing the praises of a saint whom the earth still possessed. 
" Hasten, then," said Patrick, " for thou art at the gates of death." 
Sechnall, not only undisturbed, but full of joy, sang a glorious 
hymn in honor of Patrick, and immediately after died. 

Kynrecha came to the convent-door of St. Senan. "What 
have women in common with monks ? " said the holy abbot. 
"We will not receive thee." "Before I leave this place," re- 
sponded Kynrecha, "I offer this prayer to Cod, that my soul 
may leave the body." And she sank down and expired. 

The various lives of the apostle of Ireland and his successors 
are full of facts of this nature. Supposing that a high coloring 
was given to some of these by the writers, one thing is certain : 
the people who lived during that apostleship believed in them 
firmly, and handed down their belief to their children. More- 
over, nothing was better calculated to give to a primitive people, 
like the Irish, a strong supernatural spirit and character, than to 
make them despise the joys of this earth and yearn for a better 
country. 

There are, indeed, too many facts of a similar kind related in 
the lives of St. Patrick and his fellow-workers, to bear the impu- 
tation, not of imposition, but even of delusion. The desire of 
dying, to be united with Christ ; the indiiference, at least, as to 
the prolongation of existence ; the readiness, if not the joy, with 
which the announcement of death was received, are of such fre- 
quent mention in those old legends, as matters of ordinary occur- 
rence, surprising no one, that they must be conceded as facts 
often taking place in those early ages. 



88 eeceptio:n" of oheistianity. 

And, more striking still, tliis feeling of accepting death, 
either as a boon or as a matter of conrse, and with perfect res- 
ignation to the will of God, seems to have been throughont, 
since the introduction of Christianity, a characteristic of the 
Irish people. It is often witnessed in oiir own days, and mani- 
fested equally by the young, the middle-aged, or the old. The 
young, closing their eyes to that bright life whose sweetness 
they have as yet scarcely tasted, never murmur at being deprived 
of it, though hope is to them so alluring ; the middle-aged, called 
away in the midst of projects yet unaccomplished, see the sud- 
den end of all that before interested them, with no other con- 
cern than for the children they leave behind them ; the old, 
among other races generally so tenacious of life, are, as a rule, 
glad that their last Tiour has come, and speak only of their joy 
that at last they " go home " to that country whither so many 
of their friends and kindred have gone before them. 

This in itself would stamp the Celtic character with an in- 
delible mark, distinguishing it from all other, even most Chris- 
tian, peoples. 

The second sim we find of the firm hold the supernatural 
had taken of the Irish from the very beginning is their strong 
belief in the power of the priesthood. This is so striking among 
them that they have been called by their enemies and those of 
the Church " a priest-ridden people." Let us consider if this is 
a reproach. 

If Christianity be true, what is the priesthood ? Even among 
the Greeks, from whom so many heresies formerly sprang before 
they were smitten into insignificance by schism and its punish- 
ment — Turkish slavery — when the great doctors sent them by 
Providence spoke on the subject, what were their words, and 
what impression did they make on their supercilious hearers ? 
St. John Chrysostom will answer. His long treatise, written to 
his friend Basil, is but a glowiug description of the great privi- 
leges given to the Christian priest by the High-Priest himself — 
Christ our Lord. 

When the great preacher of Antioch, though not yet a priest, 
describes the awful moment of sacrifice, the altar surrounded by 
angels descended from heaven, the man consecrated to an office 
higher than any on earth, and as high as that of the incarnate 
Son of God — God himself coming down from above and bring- 
ing down heaven with him — who can believe in Christianity and 
fail to be struck with awe ? 

Who can read the words of Christ, declaring that any one 
invested with that dignity is sent by him as he was himself sent 
by his Father, and not feel the innate respect due to such divine 
honors ? Who can read the details of those privileges with re- 
spect to the remission of sin, the conferring of grace by the sacra- 



EECEPTIOK OF CHRISTIANITY. 89 

meiits, the infallible teacliiiig of truth, the power even granted to 
them sometimes over Katiire and disease, without feeling him- 
self transported into a world far above this, .and without placing 
his confidence in what God himself has declared so powerful and 
preeminent in the regions beyond ? 

Such, in a few words, is the Christian priesthood, if Chris- 
tianity possesses any reality and is not an imposture. 

Among all nations, therefore, where sound foith exists, the 
greatest respect is shown to the ministers of God ; but the Irish 
have at all times been most persistent in their veneration and 
trust. And if we would ascertain the cause of their standing in 
this regard, we shall find that other nations, while firmly believ- 
ing the words of Christ, keep their eyes open to human frailty, 
and look more keenly and with more suspicion on the conduct 
of men invested with so high a dignity, but subject at the same 
time to earthly passions and sins ; while the Irish, on the con- 
trary, abandon themselves with all the impulsiveness of their 
nature to the feeling uppermost in their hearts, which is ever 
one of trust and ready reliance. 

But this statement, whatever may be its intrinsic value, 
itself needs a further explanation, which is only to be found in 
the greater attraction the supernatural always possessed for the 
Irish nature, when developed by grace. They accept fully and 
unsuspiciously what is heavenly, because they, more than others, 
feel that they are made for heaven, and the earth, consequently, 
has for them fewer attractions. They cling to a world far above 
this, and whatever belongs to it is dear to them. 

Hence, from the first preaching of Christianity among them, 
all earthly dignities have paled before the heavenly honors of 
the priesthood. They have been taught by St. Patrick that 
even the supreme duties of a real Christian king fall far below 
those of a Christian bishop. 

The king, according to the apostle of Ireland — and his words 
have become a canon of the Irish Church — " has to judge no 
man unjustly ; to be the protector of the stranger, of the widow, 
and the orphan ; to repress theft, punish adultery, not to keep 
bufibons or unchaste persons ; not to exalt iniquity, but to sweep 
away the impious from the land, exterminate parricides and per- 
jurers ; to defend the poor, to appoint just men over the affairs 
of the kingdom, to consult wise and temperate elders, to defend 
his native land against its enemies rightfully and stoutly ; in all 
things to put his trust in God." 

All this evidently refers only to the exterior polity and 
administration. But "the bishop must be the hand which sup- 
ports, the pilot who directs, the anchor that stays, the hammer 
that strikes, the sun that enlightens, the dew which moistens, 
the tablet to be written on, the book to be read, the mirror to be ' 



90 EECEPTIOF OF OHEISTIANITY. 

seen in, the terror that terrifies, the image of all that is good ; 
and let him be all for all." 

Under this metaphorical stjle we here discern all the in- 
terior qnalities of a spiritual Christian guide, teaching no less by 
authority than example. 

And, in the opinion of the converts of Patrick, were not the 
bishops, abbots, and priests, supported by an invisible power, 
stronger than all visible armies and guards of kings and princes ? 

" When the King of Cashel dared to contend against the holy 
abbot Mochoemoc, the first night after the dispute an old man 
took the king by the hand and led him to the northern city- 
walls ; there he opened the king's eyes, and he beheld all the 
Irish saints of his own sex in white garments, with Patrick at 
their head ; they were there to protect Mochoemoc, and they 
filled the plain of Femyn. 

" The second night the old man came again and took the king 
to the southern wall, and there he saw the white-robed glorious 
army of Ireland's virgins, led by Bridget : they too had come to 
defend Mochoemoc, and they filled the plain oi'Monael." ' 

In the annals of no other Christian nation do we see so 
many examples of the power of the ministers of God to punish 
the wicked and help and succor the good, as we do in the hagi- 
ography of Ireland. Bad kings and chieftains reproved, cursed, 
punished ; the poor assisted, the oppressed delivered from their 
enemies, the sick restored to health, the dead even raised to hfe, 
are occurrences which the reader meets in almost every page of 
the lives of Irish saints. The BoUandists, accustomed as they 
were to meet with miracles of that kind, in the lives they pub- 
lished, found in Irish hagiography such a superabundance of them, 
that they refused to admit into their admirable compilation a 
great number already published or in manuscript. Nevertheless, 
the critics of our days, finding nothing impossible to or unworthy 
of God in the large collection of Colgan and other Irish anti- 
quarians, express their surprise at their exclusion from that of 
Bollandus. 

ISTo one at least will refuse to concede that, true or not, the 
facts related in those lives are always provocative of piety and 
redolent of faith. They certainly prove that at all periods of 
their existence the Irish have manifested a holy avidity for every 
thing supernatural and miraculous. Do they not know that our 
Lord has promised gifts of this description to his apostles and 
their successors ? And what the acts of the Apostles and many 
acts of martyrs positively state as having happened at the very 
beginning of the Church, is not a whit less extraordinary or 
physically impossible than any tiling related in the Irish legends. 

' Many quotations in this chapter are from the " Legend. Hist.," by J. G, Shea. 



EECEPTIOK OF CHRISTIANITY. 91 

Every Cliristian soul naturally abhors the unbelief of a 
Strauss or of a Kenan as to the former ; is it not unnatural, 
then, for the same Christian soul to reject the latter because they 
fall under the easy sneer of " an Irish legend," and are not con- 
tained in Holy Writ ? 

At all events, the faith of the Irish has never wavered in 
such matters, and to-day they hold the same confidence in the 
priests' power that meets us everywhere in the pages of Colgan 
and Ward. The reason is, that they admit Christianity without 
reserve ; and in its entirety it is supernatural. The criticisms 
of human reason on holy things hold in their eyes something of 
the sacrilegious and blasphemous ; such criticisms are for them 
open disrespect for divine things ; and, inasmuch as divine things 
are, in fact, more real than any phenomena under natural laws 
can be, skepticism in the former case is always more unreason- 
able than in the latter, supposing always that the narrative of 
the Divine favors reposes on sufficient authority. 

It is clear, therefore, that since the preaching of Christianity 
in Ireland, the world showed itself to the inhabitants of that 
country in a different light to that in which other liien beheld 
it. For them, Nature is never separated from its Maker ; the 
hand of God is ever visible in all mundane affairs, and the 
frightful parting between the spiritual and material worlds, first 
originated by the Baconian philosophy, which culminates in our 
days in the almost open negation of the spiritual, and thus 
materializes all things, is with justice viewed by the children of 
St. Patrick with a holy horror as leading to atheism, if it be not 
atheism itself. 

Without going to such extremes as the avowed infidels of 
modern times, all other Christian nations have seemed afraid to 
draw the logical conclusions whose premises were laid down by 
revelation. They have tried to follow a via media between truth 
and error ; they have admitted to a certain extent the separation 
of God and N'ature, supposing the act of creation to have passed 
long ages ago, and not continuing through all time; and thus 
they are bound by their system to hold that miracles are very 
extraordinary things, not to be believed jpriina facie, requiring 
infinite precautions before admitting the supposition of their 
having taken place ; all which indicates a real repugnance to 
their admission, and an innate fear of supposing God all-power- 
ful, just, and good. It is the first step to Manicheism and the 
kindred errors ; and most Christian nations having, unfortu- 
nately, imbibed the principles of those errors in the philosophy 
of modern times, have almost lost all faith in the supernatural, 
and reduced revelation to a meagre and cold system, unrealized 
and not to be realized in human life. 

]^ot so the Irish. Religion has entered deep into their life. 



92 EEOEPTION" OF CHEISTIANITY. 

It is a thing of every moment and of every place. I^ature, God's 
handiwork, instead of repelling them from God himself, draws 
them gently but forcibly toward Him, so that they feel them- 
selves to be truly recipients of the blessings of God by being 
sharers in the blessings of Nature. 

And must God's ministers, who have received such extraor- 
dinary powers over the supernatural world, be entirely de- 
prived of power over the inferior part of creation ? Who can 
say so, and have true faith in the words of our Lord ? Who can 
say so, and truly call himself the follower and companion of the 
saints who have all believed so firmly in the constant action of 
God in this, the lesser part of his creation ? 

And this faith of the Irish in the power of the priesthood is 
not a thing of yesterday. It dates from their adoption of Chris- 
tianity, to continue, we hope, forever. It ought, therefore, to 
be carefully distinguished from that love for every priest of God 
which beats so ardently in the hearts of them all, and which was 
so strengthened by a long community of persecution and suf- 
fering. 

In Ireland, as in every other Christian country, the priest- 
hood has always sided with the people against their oppressors. 
During the early ages of Christianity in the island, the bishops, 
priests, and monks, were often called upon to exercise their 
authority and power against princes and chiefs of clans, accus- 
tomed to plunder, destroy, and kill, on the slightest pretext, and 
unused to control their fierce passions, inflamed by the rancor 
of feuds and the pride of strength and bravery. Some of those 
chieftains even opposed tbe progress of religion ; and it is said 
that Eochad, King of Ulster, cast his two daughters, whom Pat- 
rick had baptized and consecrated to God, into the sea. 

For several centuries the heads of clans were generally so 
unruly and so hard to bring under the yoke of Christ, that the 
saints, in taking the side of the poor, had to stand as a wall of 
brass to stem the fury of the great and powerful. 

Bridget even, the modest and tender virgin, often spoke 
harshly of princes and rulers. " Wliile she dwelt in the land 
of Bregia, King Connal's daughter-in-law came to ask her prayers, 
for she w^as barren. Bridget refused to go to receive her; but, 
leaving her without, she sent one of her maidens. When the 
nun returned : ' Mother,' she asked, ' why would you not go and 
see the queen ? you pray for the wives of peasants.' ' Because,' 
said the servant of God, ' the poor and the peasants are almost 
all good and pious, while the sons of kings are serpents, children 
of blood and fornication, except a small number of elect. But, 
after all, as she had recourse to us, go back and tell her that she 
shall have a son ; he will be wicked, and his race shall be ac- 
cursed, yet he shall reign many years.' " 



EEOEPTIOl^ OF CHRISTIANITY. 93 

We might multiply examples such as this, wherein the saints 
and the ministers of God always side with the poor and the 
helpless ; and their great number in the lives of the old saints at 
once gives a reason for the deep love which the lower class of 
the Irish people felt for the holy men who were at once the ser- 
vants of God and their helpers in every distress. 

The same thing is to be found in the whole subsequent his- 
tory of the island, chiefly in the latter ages of persecution. But, 
as we said before, this affection and love must be distinguished 
'from the feeling of reverence and awe resulting from the super- 
natural character of their office. The first feeling is merely a 
natural one, produced by deeds of benevolence ancl holy charity 
fondly remembered by the individuals benefited. The second 
was the efiect of religious faith in the sacredness of the priestly 
character, and remained in full force even when the poor them- 
selves fell imder reproof or threat in consequence of some mis- 
deed or vicious habit. 

Hence the universal respect which the whole race entertains 
for their spiritual rulers, and their unutterable confidence in 
their high prerogatives. In prosperity as in adversity, in free- 
dom or in subjection, they always preserve an instinctive faith 
in the unseen power which Christ conferred on those whom He 
chose to be his ministers. This feeling, which is undoubtedly 
found among good Christians in all places, is as certainly only 
found among particular individuals ; but among the Irish Celts 
it is the rule rather than the exception. 

"Well have they merited, then, in this sense, from the days of 
St. Patrick downj the title of a "priest-ridden" people, which 
has been fixed on them as a term of reproach by those for whom 
all belief in the supernatural is belief in imposture. 

Another and a stronger fact still, exemplifying the extent to 
which the Irish have at all times carried their devotion to the 
supernatural character of the Christian religion, is the extraor- 
dinary ardor with which, from the very beginning, they rushed 
into the high path of perfection, called the way of " evangelical 
counsels." ISTowhere else were such scenes ever witnessed in 
Christian history. 

For the great mass of people the common way of life is the 
practice of the commandments of God ; it is only the few who 
feel themselves called on to enter upon another path, and who 
experience interiorly the need of being "perfect." 

In Ireland the case was altogether diiferent from the outset. 
St. Patrick, notwithstanding his intimate knowledge of the lean- 
ings of the race, expresses in his " Confessio " the wonder and 
delight he experienced when he saw in what manner and in what 
numbers they begged to be consecrated to God the very first 
day after their baptism. Yet were they conscious that this very 



94 KEOEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

eagerness would excite tlie greater opposition on tlie part of 
their pagan relatives and friends, ^hus we read of the fate of 
Eocliad's daughters, and the story of Ethne and Felimia. 

The whole nation, in fact, appeared suddenly transported 
with a holy impetuosity, and lifted at once to the height of 
Christian life. Monasteries and nunneries could not be con- 
structed fast enough, although they contented themselves with 
the lightest fabrics — wattles being the ordinary materials for 
walls, and slender laths for roofs. 

IS^or was this an ephemeral ardor, like a fire of stubble or 
straw, flashing into a momentary blaze, to relapse into deeper 
gloom. It lasted for several centuries ; it was still in full flame 
at the time of Columba, more than two hundred years after 
Patrick ; it grew into a vast conflagration in the seventh and 
eighth centuries, when multitudes rushed forth from that burn- 
ing island of the blest to spread the sacred fire through Europe. 

How the nation continued to multiply, when so many de- 
voted themselves to a holy celibacy, is only to be explained by 
the large number of children with which God blessed those who 
pursued an ordinary life, and who, from what is related in the 
chronicles of the time, must have been in a minority. 

Of the first monasteries and convents erected not a single 
vestige now remains, because of the perishable materials of which 
they were constructed ; yet each of them contained hundreds, 
nay thousands, of monks or nuns. 

But, even in our days, we are furnished with an ocular dem- 
onstration of what men could scarcely bring themselves to 
believe, or at least would term an exaggeration, did not stand- 
ing proof remain. God inspired his children with the thought 
of erecting more substantial structures, of building walls of stone 
and roofing them in with tiles and metal ; and the island was 
literally covered, not with Gothic castles or luxurious palaces 
and sumptuous edifices, but with large and commodious build- 
ings and churches, wherein the • religious life of the. inmates 
might be carried on with greater comfort and seclusion from the 
world. ■ 

At the time of the Reformation all those asylums of perfec- 
tion and asceticism were of course profaned, converted to vile 
or slavish uses, many altogether destroyed to the very founda- 
tions ; a greater number were allowed to decay gradually and 
become heaps of ruins. 

And what happened when the English Government, unable 
any longer to resist public opinion, was compelled to consent 
that a survey be made of the poor and comparatively few re- 
mains still in existence, in order to manifest a show of interest 
for the past history of the island ; when commissioners were ap- 
pointed to publish lists and diagrams of the former dwellings of 



EEOEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 

the " saints," wliicli tlie " zeal " of tlie "reformers" liad battered 
down without mercy ? To the astonishment of all, it was proved 
by the ruins still in existence that the greater portion of the 
island had been once occupied by monasteries and convents of 
every description. And Prof. O' Curry has stated his conviction, 
based on local traditions and geographical and topographical 
names, that a great number of these can be traced back to Pat- 
rick and his first companions. 

It is clear enough, then, that, fi-om the beginning, the Irish 
were not only " priest-ridden," but also very attached to " monk- 
ish superstitions." 

Yet we could not form a complete idea of that attachment 
were we to limit ourselves to an enumeration of the buildings 
actually erected, supposing such an enumeration possible at this 
time. For we know, by many facts related in Irish hagiology, 
that a great number of those who devoted themselves to a life of 
penance and austerity, did not dwell even in the humble struct- 
ures of the first monks, but, deeming themselves unworthy of 
the society of their brethren, or condemned by a severe but just 
"friend of their soul," as the confessor was then called, hid 
themselves in mountain-caves, in the recesses of woods or forests, 
or banished themselves to crags ever beaten by the waves of 
the sea. 

Yes, there was a time when those dreadful solitudes of the 
Hebrides, which frighten the modern tourist in his summer ex- 
plorations, teemed with Christian life, and every rock, cave, and 
sand-bar had its inhabitant, and that inhabitant an Irish monk. 

They sometimes spent seven years on a desert islet doing 
penance for a single sin. They often passed a lifetime on a rock 
in the midst of the ocean, alone with God, and enjoying no com- 
munion but that of their conscience. 

"Who knows how many thousands of men have led such a life, 
shocking, indeed, to the feelings of worldlings, but in reality de- 
voted to the contemplation of what is above Nature — a life, con- 
sequently, exalted and holy ? 

Passing from the solitudes to the numerous hives where the 
bees of primitive Christianity in Ireland were busy at work con- 
structing their combs and secreting their honey, what do we see ? 
People generally imagine that all monastic establisliments have 
been alike ; that those of mediaeval times were simply the repro- 
duction of earlier ones. An abbot, the three vows, austerity, 
psalmody, study — such are the general features common to all ; 
but those of Ireland had peculiarities which are worthy of ex- 
amination. We shall find in them a stronger expression of the 
supernatural, perhaps; certainly a more heavenly cast, a greater 
forgetfulness of the world, its manners' and habits, its passions 
and aims. 



96 EECEPTION OF CHEISTIANITY. 

Patrick had learned all lie knew of tliis holy life in the estab- 
lishment of Lerins, wherein the ^V^est reflected more truly than 
it ever did subsequently the Oriental light of the great founders 
of monasticism in Palestine and Egypt. 

The first thing to be remarked is the want, to a great extent, 
of a strict system. The Danes, when Christianized, and the 
Anglo-lSTormans, introduced this afterwards ; but the genius of 
the Irish race is altogether opposed to it, and the Scandinavian 
races in following ages could hardly ever bring them under the 
cold uniformity of an iron rule. 

Did St. Patrick establish a rule in the monasteries which he 
founded ? Did St. Columba two centuries later ? Did any of the 
great masters of spiritual life who are known to have exercised 
an influence on the world of Irish convents ? JSTot only has 
nothing of the kind been transmitted to us, but no mention of it 
is made in the lives of holy abbots which we possess.' St. Co- 
lumbanus's rule is the only one which has come down to us ; but 
the monasteries founded by him were all situated in Burgundy, 
Switzerland, Germany, and Italy — that is to say, out of Ireland, 
out of the island of saints. He was compelled to furnish his 
monasteries with a written rule, because they were surrounded 
by barbarous peoples, some of whom his establishments often 
received as monks, and to whom the holiness of Ireland was 
unfamiliar or utterly unknown. But why should the j)eople of 
God, living in his devoted island, redeemed as soon as born by 
the waters of baptism, be shackled by enactments which might 
serve as an obstacle to the action of the Holy Ghost on their free 
souls ? 

According to the common opinion, each founder of a monas- 
tery had his own rule, which he himself was the first to follow 
in all its rigor ; if disciples came, they were to observe it, or go 
elsewhere ; if, after having embraced it, they found themselves 
unable to keep it to the letter, the abbot was indulgent, and did 
not impose on them a burden which they could no longer bear, 
after having first proved their willingness to practise it. 

Thus, it is reported that St. Mochta was the only one Avho 
practised his own rule exactly, his monks imitating him as well 
as they coiild. St. Pintan, who was inclined to be severe, re- 
ceived this warning in a vision : " Fight unto the end thyself; 
but beware of being a cause of scandal to others, by requiring all 
to fight as thou doest, for one clay is weaker than another." 

Thus, every founder, every abbot even, left to the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit, practised austerities which in our days of self- 
indulgence seem absolutely incredible, and showed themselves 

'The "Irish Penitentials," quoted at length in Rev. Dr. Moran's "Early Irish 
Church," are not monastic rules, although many canons have reference to monks. 



EEOEPTION OF OHEISTIANITY. 97 

severe to tliose under their autliority. But this severity was 
tempered by such zeal for the good of souls, and consequently 
by such an unmistakable charity, that the penitent monk carried 
his burden not only with resignation, but with joy. This, in 
after-ages, became a characteristic feature of Irish monasticism. 

The life of Oolumba is full of examples of this holy severity. 
In St. Patrick's life we read that Colman died of thirst rather 
than quench it before the time appointed by his master. 

How many facts of a similar nature might be mentioned ! 
Enough to say that, after so many ages, in which, thanks to bar- 
barous persecutions, all ecclesiastical and monastic traditions 
were lost to Ireland, through the sheer impossibilifcy of following 
them up, the Irish still show a marked predilection for the holy 
austerity of penance, though the rest of the Christian world 
seems to have almost totally forgotten it. 

But if the Irish convents lacked system, there was at the 
same time in them an exuberance of feeling, an enthusiastic im- 
pulse, which is to be found nowhere else to the same extent, and 
which we call their second peculiar feature after they received 
Christianity. This is beautifully expressed in a hymn of the 
office of St. Finian : " Behold the day of gladness ; the clerks 
applaud and are in joy ; the sun of justice, which had been hid- 
den in the clouds, shines forth again." 

As soon as this primitive enthusiasm seemed to slacken in 
the least, reformers appeared to enkindle it again. Such was 
Bridget, such was Gildas, such were the disciples of St. David of 
Menevia in Wales, such was any one whom the Spirit of God in- 
spired with love for Ireland. Thus the scenes enacted in the 
time of Patrick were again and again repeated. 

And when a monastery was built, it was not properly a mon- 
astery, but a city rather ; for the whole country round joined in 
the goodly work. As some one has said, " it looked as if Ire- 
land was going to cease to be a nation, and become a church." 

With regard to the question of ground and the appropriation 
of landed property, what matters it who is the owner ? If it be 
clan territory, there is the clan with nothing but welcome, ap- 
plause, and assistance. If it be private, the owner is not con- 
sulted even ; how could he think of opposing the work of God ? 
Thus, we never read in Irish history — in the earlier stages at 
least — of those long charters granted in other lands by kings, 
dukes, and counts, and preserved with such care in the archives 
of the monastery. It seems that the Danes, after they became 
Christians, were the first to introduce the custom ; after them, 
the Anglo-ISTormans, in the true spirit of their race, made a 
flourishing business of it. The Irish themselves never thought 
of such at first. There was no fear of any one ever claiming the 
ground on which God's house stood. The buildings were there ; 
7 



98 EEOEPTION" OF CHRISTIAOTTY. 

the ground needed to support them : Avliat Irishman could think 
of driving away the holy inmates ' and pulling the walls about 
their ears ? 

The whole surrounding population is busy erecting them. 
Long rows of wattles and tessel-work are set in right order ; over 
them a rough roof of boards ; within small cells begin to appear, 
as the slight partitions are erected between them. Symmetry 
or no symmetery, the position of the ground decides the ques- 
tion ; for there is no need of the skill of a surveyor to establish 
the grade. Does not the rain run its own way, once it begins ? 

How far and how wide will those long rows reach ? They 
seem the streets of a city ; and in truth they are. The place is 
to receive two, three thousand monks, over and above the stu- 
dents committed to their care. And, in addition to the cells to 
dwell in, there are the halls wherein to teach; the museums and 
repositories of manuscripts, of sacred objects ; the rooms to write 
in, translate, compose ; the sheds to hold provisions, to prepare 
and cook them, ready for the meal. 

For the most important edifice — ^the temple of God — alone 
stones are cut, shaped, and fitted each to each with care and pre- 
cision. A holy simplicity surrounds the art ; yet are there not 
wanting carven crosses and other divine emblems sculptured out. 
Within, the heavenly mysteries of religion will be performed. 
Should you ask, " "Why so small ? " the answer is ready. That 
large space empty around holds room enough for the worshippers, 
whose numbers could be accommodated in no edifice. The 
minds of Irish architects had not yet expanded to the conception 
of a St. Peter's. Inside is room enough for the ministers of re- 
ligion ; without, at the tinkling of the bell, in the round-tower 
adjoining, the faithful will join in the services. 

l^or was it only in the erection of those edifices that a cheer- 
ful impulse, whicli overlooked or overcame all difiiculties, was 
displayed. The monastic life was not all the time a life of pen- 
ance and gloomy austerity, but of active work also and over- 
flowing feeling, of true poetry and enthusiastic exultation. We 
read in the fragments we still possess how, on the arid rock of 
lona, Columba remembered his former residence at Deny, with 
its woods of oaks and the pure waters of its loughs. In all the 
lives of Irish saints we read of the deep attachment they always 
preserved for their country, relatives, and friends ; what they did 
and were ready to do for them. And though all this was at bot- 
tom but a natural feeling, the extent to which it was carried will 
make us better acquainted with the • Irish character, and explain 
more clearly that extraordinary expansion of soul which, in the 
domains of the supernatural, surpassed every thing witnessed 
elsewhere. 

" In a monastery two brothers had lived from childhood. 



RECEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 

The elder died, and while lie was dying tlie other was laboring 
in the forest. When he came back, he saw the brethren open- 
ing a grave in the cemetery, and thus he learned that his brother 
was dead. He hastened to the spot where the Abbot Fintan, 
with some of his monks, were chanting psalms aronnd the 
corpse, and asked him the favor of dying with his brother, and 
entering with him into the heavenly kingdom. ' Thy brother 
is already in heaven,' replied Fintan, ' and you cannot enter to- 
gether unless he rise again.' Then he knelt in prayer, the angels 
who had received the holy soul restored it, and the dead man, 
rising in his bier, called his brother : ' Come,' said he, ' but 
come quickly ; the angels await us.' At the same time he made 
room beside him, and both, lying down, slept together in death, 
and ascended together to the kingdom of God." 

This anecdote may tend better than any thing else to show 
us how l^ature and grace were united in the Irish soul, to warm 
it, purify it, exalt it above ordinary feelings and earthly passions, 
and keep it constantly in a state of energy and vitality unknown 
to other peoples. For, in what page of the ecclesiastical history 
of other nations do we read of things such as these ? 

"With regard to their country, also, grace came to the aid of 
JSTature ; the supernatural was, therefore, seldom absent from the 
natm'al in their minds, and something of this double union has 
remained in them in every sense, and has, no doubt, contributed 
to render their nationality imperishable in spite of persecution. 
How ardent and pure in the heart of Columba was the love of 
Ireland, from which he was a voluntary exile ! Patrick, also, 
though not native born, yielded to none in that sacred feeling ; 
one of the three things he sought of God on dying was, that Erin 
should not "remain forever under a foreign yoke." Kieran 
offered the same prayer, and their reason for thus praying was 
that she was the " island of saints," destined to help out the sal- 
vation of many. 

Religion has been invariably connected with that acute senti- 
ment ever present in the minds of Irishmen for their country ; 
and it is, doubtless, that holy and supernatural feeling which has 
preserved a country which enemies strove so strenuously to wrest 
from them. 

But it was not love of country alone, of relatives and friends, 
which enkindled in their hearts a spirit of enthusiasm ; their 
whole monastic life was one of high-spirited devotedness, and 
energy, and action, more than human. 

We see them laboring in and around their monastic hive. 
How they pray and chanf the divine oflB.ce ; how they study and 
expound the holy doctrine to their pupils ; how they are ever 
travelling, walking in procession by hundreds and by thousands 
through the island, the interior spirit not allowing them to' stand 



100 • RECEPTION" OF CHRISTIANITY. 

still. There are so many pilgrimages to perform, so many 
shrines to venerate, so many works of brotherly love to under- 
take. Other monks in other countries, indeed, did the same, 
but seldom with such universal ardor. The whole island, as we 
said, is one church. On all sides you may meet bishops, and 
priests, and monks, bearing revered relics, or proceeding to 
found a new convent, plant another sacred edifice, or establish 
a house for the needy. The people on the way fall in and follow 
their footsteps, sharers of the burning enthusiasm. Many — ^how 
many ! — were thus attracted to this mode of life, wherein there 
was scarce aught earthly, but all breathing holiness and heavenly 
grace ! 

Thus the island was from the beginning a holy island. But 
zeal for Grod in their own country alone not being enough for 
their ardor, those men of God were early moved by the impulse 
of going abroad to spread the faith. Yolumes might be written 
of their apostleship among barbarous tribes ; we have room only 
for a few words. 

They first went to the islands north of them, to the Heb- 
rides, the Faroe Isles, and even Iceland, which they colonized 
before the ITorwegian pirates landed there. Then they evan- 
gelized Scotland and the north of England ; and, starting from 
Lindisfarne, they completed the work of the conversion of the 
Anglo-Saxons, which was begun by St. Augustin and his monks 
in the south. 

Finally, the whole continent of Western Europe oifered itself 
to their zeal, and at once they were ready to enter fully and un- 
reservedly into the current of new ideas and energies which at 
that time began to renew the face of that portion of the world 
overspread by barbarians from Germany. Under the Merovin- 
gian kings in France, and later on, under the Carlovingian 
dynasty, they became celebrated in the east of France, on the 
banks of the Rhine, even in the north through Germany, in the 
heart of Switzerland, and the north of Italy. This is not the 
place to attempt even a sketch of their missionary labors, now 
known to all the students of the history of those times. But we 
may here mention that at that time the Irish monarchs and 
rulers became acquainted with continental dynasties and afiairs 
through the necessary intercourse held by the Irish bishops and 
monks with Rome, the centre of Catholicity. Thus we see that 
Malachi II. corresponded with Charles the Bald, with a view of 
making a pilgrimage to Rome. 

We learn from the yellow-book of Lecain that Conall, son of 
Coelmuine, brought from Rome the law of Sunday, such as was 
afterward practised in Ireland. 

Over and above the Irish missionaries who kept up a con- 
stant correspondence from the Continent of Europe with their 



EECEPTIOX OF CHRISTIAmTY. 101 

native land, it is known that many in those early ages went on 
pilgrimages to Eome ; among others, St. Degan, St. Kilian, the 
apostle of Franconia; St. Sedulius the younger, who assisted at a 
Eoraan council in 721, and was sent by the Pope on a mission 
to Sj)ain ; St. Donatus, afterward Bishop of Fiesole, and his 
disciple, Andrew. St. Cathald went from Rome to Jerusalem, 
and on his return was made Bishop of Tarento. D enough, son 
of Brian Boru, went to Kome in 1063, carrying, it is said, the 
crown of his father, and there died. 

It has been calculated that the ancient Irish monks held from 
the sixth to the ninth century thirteen monasteries in Scotland, 
seven in France, twelve in Armoric Gaul, seven in Lotharingia, 
eleven in Burgundy, nine in Belgium, ten in Alsatia, sixteen in 
Bavaria, fifteen in Rhsetia, Helvetia, and Suevia, besides several 
in Thuringia and on the left bank of the Rhine. Ireland was 
theti not only included in, but at. the head of, the European 
movement ; and yet that forms a period in her annals which as 
yet has scarcely been studied. 

The religious zeal which was then so manifest in the island 
itself burned likewise among many Continental nations, and 
lasted from the introduction of Christianity to the Danish in- 
vasion. What contributed chiefly to make that ardor lasting 
was, that every thing connected with religion made a part even 
of their exterior life. Grace had taken entire possession of the 
national soul. This world was looked upon as a shadow, beauti- 
ful only in reflecting something of the beauty of heaven. 

Hence were the Irish " the saints." So were they titled by 
all, and they accepted the title with a genuine and holy sim- 
plicity which betokened a truer modesty than the pretended 
denegation which we might expect. Thus they seemed above 
temptation. The virgins consecrated to God were as numerous 
at least as the monks. These had also their processions and 
pilgrimages ; they went forth from houses over-full to found 
others, not knowing or calculating beforehand the spot where 
they might rest and " expect resurrection." Such was their lan- 
guage. Sometimes they applied at the doors of monasteries, and 
if there was no spot in the neighborhood suitable for the sis- 
ters, the monks abandoned to them their abode, their buildings 
and cultivated fields where the crops were growing, taking with 
them naught save the sacred vessels and the books they might 
need in the new establishment they went forth to found else- 
where. 

Who could imagine, then, that even a thought could enter 
their minds beyond those of charity and kindness ? Were they 
not dead utterly to worldly passions, and living only to God ? 
It would have been a sacrilege to have profaned the holy island, 
not only with an unlawful act, but even with a worldly imagina- 



102 EECEPTION OF OHEISTIAmXY. 

tion. Had not many lioly men and women seen angels con- 
stantly coming down from lieaven, and the sonls of tlie just at 
their departure going straight from Ireland to heaven ? Both in 
perpetual communication ! Had the eyes of all been as pure as 
those of the best among them, the truth would have been un- 
veiled to all alike, and the " isle of saints " would have shown 
itself to them as what it really was — a bright country where re- 
demption was a great fact ; where the souls of the great major- 
ity were truly and actually redeemed in the full sense of the 
word ; where people might enjoy a foretaste of heaven — the very 
space above their heads being to them at all times a road con- 
necting the heavenly mansions with this sublunary world. 

True is it that there were ever in the island a number of 
great sinners who desecrated the holy spot they dwelt on by 
their deeds of blood. The Saviour predicted that there should 
be " tares among the wheat " everywhere until the day of judg- 
ment. 

It was among the chieftains principally, almost entirely, that 
sin prevailed. The clan-system, unfortunately, favored deadly 
feuds, which often drenched all parts of the island in blood. 
Family quarrels, being in themselves unnatural, led to the most 
atrocious crimes. The old Greek drama furnishes frightful ex- 
amples of it, and similar passions sometimes filled the breasts of 
those leaders of Irish clans. Few of them died in their beds. 
When carried away by passion, they respected nothing which 
men generally respect. 

It would, however, be an exaggeration to suppose on this 
account a distinct and complete antagonism to have existed be- 
tween the clan and fhe Church, and to class all the princes on 
the side of evil as opposed to the " saints," whom we have con- 
templated leading a celestial life. We know from St. Aengus 
that one of the glories of Ireland is that many of her saints were 
of princely families, whereas among other nations generally the 
Gospel was first accepted by the poor and lowly, and found its 
enemies among the higher and educated classes. But in Ireland 
the great, side by side with the least of their clansmen, bowed to 
the yoke of Christ, and the bards and learned men became 
monks and bishops from the very first preaching of the Word. 

The fact is, a great number of kings and chieftains made 
their station doubly renowned by their virtues, and find place 
in the chronicle of Irish saints. Who can read, for instance, the 
story of King Guaire without admiring his faith and true Chris- 
tian spirit ? 

It is reported that as St. Caimine and St. Cumain Fota were 
one day conversing on spiritual things with that holy king of 
Connaught, Caimine said to Guaire, " O king, could this church 
be filled on a sudden with whatever thou shouldst wish, what 



EEOEPTION OF OHRISTIAOTTY. 103 

wonld thy desire be ? " "I should wish," replied the king, " to 
have all the treasures that the church could hold, to devote them 
to the salvation of souls, the erection of churches, and the wants 
of Christ's poor." " And what wouldst thou ask ? " said the 
king to Fota. " I would," he replied, " have as many holy 
books as the church could contain, to give • all who seek divine 
wisdom, to spread among the people the saving doctrine of 
Christ, and rescue souls from the bondage of Satan." Both then 
turned to Caimine. " For my part," said he, " were this church 
filled with men afSicted with every form of suffering and dis- 
ease, I should ask of God to vouchsafe to assemble in my 
wretched body all their evils, all their pains, and give me 
strength to support them patiently, for the love of the Saviour 
of the world." ' 

Thus the most sublime and supernatural spirit of Christianity 
became natural to the Irish mind in the great as well as in the 
lowly, in the rich as well as in the poor. Women rivalled men 
in that respect. 

" Daria was blind from birth. Once, whilst conversing with 
Bridget, she said : 'Bless my eyes that I may see the world, and 
gratify my. longing.' The night was dark; it grew light for 
her, and the world appeared to her gaze. But when she had 
beheld it, she turned again to Bridget. ' Kow close my eyes,' 
said she, 'for the more one is absent from the world, the more 
present he is before God.' " 

Even though one may express doubt as to the reality of this 
miracle, one thing, at least, is beyond doubt : that the spirit of 
the words of Daria was congenial to the Irish mind at the time, 
and that none but one who had first reached the highest point 
of supernatural life could conceive or give utterance to such a 
sentiment. 

That more than human life and spirit elevated, ennobled, 
and, as it were, divinized, even the ordinary human and natural 
feelings, which not only ceased to become dangerous, but be- 
came, doubtless, highly pleasing to God and meritorious in his 
sight. An example may better explain our meaning : 

" JSTinnid was a young scholar, not over-reverent, whom the 
influence of Bridget one day suddenly overcame, so that he 
afterward appeared quite a different being. Bridget announced 
to him that from his hand she should, for the last time, receive 
the body and blood of our Lord. Kinnid resolved that his hand 
should remain pure for so high and holy an ofl&ce. He enclosed 
it in an iron case, and wishing at the same time to postpone, as 
far as lay in his power, the moment that was to take Bridget 

^ This passage is gi^en in Latin by Colgan {Ada 8S.). In the original Irish, 
translated and published by Dr. Todd — Liber Hymn — there are more details. 



104 EECEPTION" OF CHRISTIANITY. 

from the world, lie set out for Brittany, throwing the key of the 
box into the sea. But the designs of God are immutable. When 
Bridget's hour had come, Ninnid was driven by a storm on tho 
Irish coast, and the key was miraculously given up by the deep." 

Where, except in Ireland, could such friendship continue for 
long years, without 'giving cause not only for the least scandal, 
but even for the remotest danger ? In that island the natural 
feelings of the human heart were wholly absorbed by heavenly 
emotions, in which nothing earthly could be found ? Hence the 
celebrated division of the " three orders of the Irish saints," the 
first being so far above temptation that no regulation was imposed 
on the Cenobites with respect to their intercourse with women. 

" Women were welcome and cared for ; they were admitted, 
so to speak, to the sanctuary ; it was shared with them, occupied 
in common. Double, or even mixed monasteries, so near to 
each other as to form but one, brought the two sexes together 
for mutual edification ; men became instructors of women ; 
women of men." 

J^othing of the kind was ever witnessed elsewhere ; nothing 
of the kind was to be seen ever after. Kobert of Arbrissel 
established something similar in the order of Fontevrault in 
France ; but there it was a strange and very uncommon excep- 
tion ; in Ireland for two centuries it was the rule. This alone 
would show how completely the Christian spirit had taken pos- 
session of the whole race from the first. 

It is this which gives to Irish hagiology a peculiar character, 
making it appear strange even to the best men of other nations. 
The elevation of human feeling to such a height of perfection is 
so unusual that men cannot fail to be surprised wherever they 
may meet it. 

Yet far from appearing strange, almost inexplicable, it would 
have been recognized as the natural result of the working of the 
Christian religion, if the spirit brought on earth by our Lord 
had been more thoroughly diffused among men, if all had been 
penetrated by it to the same degree, if all had equally under- 
stood the meaning of the Gospel preached to them. 

But, unfortunately, so many and so great were the obstacles 
opposed everywhere to the working of the Spirit of God in the 
souls of men, that comparatively few were capable of being alto- 
gether transformed into beings of another nature. 

The great mass lagged far behind in the race of perfection. 
They were admitted to the fold of Christ, and lived generally at 
least in the practice of the commandments ; but the object pro- 
posed to himself by the Saviour of mankind was imperfectly 
carried out on earth. The life of the world was far from being 
imj)regnated by the spirit which he brought from heaven. 

In the " island of saints " we certainly see a great number 



EEOEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 105 

open out at once to tlie fulness of that divine influence. Herein 
we have the explanation of the deep faith which has ever since 
been the characteristic of the people. " Centuries have perpetu- 
ated the alliance of Catholicity and Ireland. Hevolutions have 
failed to shake it ; persecution has not broken it ; it has gained 
strength in blood and tears, and we may believe, after thirteen 
centuries of trial, that the Koman faith will disappear from Ire- 
land only with the name of Patrick and the last Irishman." 

IToTE. — It is known that F. Colgan, a Franciscan, -undertook to publish 
the "Acta Sanctorum Hibernife." He edited only two volumes : the first 
under the title of "Trias thaumaturga" containing the various lives of St. 
Patrick, St. Oolumba, and St. Bridget : — the second under the general title 
of "Acta SS."— Barnwall, an Irishman born aod educated in France, pub- 
lished the " Histoire Lggendaire d'Irlande," in which he collected, without 
much order, a number of passages of Oolgan's "Acta," and Mr. J. G-. Shea 
translated and published it. "We have taken from this translation several 
facts contained in this chapter, the work of the Franciscan being not acces- 
sible to us. 

Dr. Todd, from Irish MSS., has given a few pages showing the accuracy 
of Colgan, although the good father did not scruple occasionally to condense 
and abridge, unless the MSS. he used differed from those of Dr. Todd, The 
whole is a rich mine of interesting anecdotes, and Montalembert has shown 
what a skilful writer can find in those pages forgotten since the sixteenth 
century. Mr. Froude himself has acknoAvledged that the eighth was the 
golden age of Ireland. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE CHEISTIAJSr IRISH AND THE PAGAN DANES. 

Foe several centuries the IrisTi continued in the happy state de- 
scribed in the last chapter. "While the whole European Conti- 
nent was convulsed by the irruptions of the G-ermanic tribes, and 
of the Huns, more savage still, the island was at peace, opened 
her schools to the youth of all countries — to Anglo-Saxons 
chiefly — and spread her name abroad as the happy and holy 
isle, the dwelling of the saints, the land of prodigies, the most 
blessed spot on the earth. ISTo invading host troubled her ; the 
various Teutonic nations knew less of the sea than the Celts 
themselves, and no vessel neared the Irish coast save the peace- 
ful curraghs which carried her monks and missionaries abroad, 
or her own sons in quest of food and adventure. 

Providence would seem to have imposed upon the nation 
the lofty mission of healing the wounds of other nations as they 
lay helpless in the throes of death, of keeping the doctrines of 
the Gospel alive in Euro|)e, after those terrible invasions, and of 
leading into the fold of Christ many a shepherdless flock. The 
peaceful messengers who went forth from Ireland became as 
celebrated as her home schools and monasteries ; and well had it 
been for the Irish could such a national life as this have con- 
tinued. 

But God, who wished to prepare them for still greater things 
in future ages, who proves by suffering all whom he wishes to 
use as his best instruments, allowed the fury of the storm to 
burst suddenly upon them. It was but the beginning of their 
woes, the first step in that long road to Calvary, where they 
were to be crucified with him, to be crucified wellnigh to the 
death before their final and almost miraculous resurrection. The 
Danes were to be the first torturers of that happy and holy 
people ; the hardy rovers of the northern seas were coming to 
inaugurate a long era of woe. 

The Scandinavian irruption which desolated Europe just as 
she was beginning to recover from the effects of the first great 
Germanic wave, may be said to have lasted from the eighth to 



THE IRISH AND THE DANES. 107 

the twelfth century. Down from the Korth Sea came the shock ; 
Ireland was consequently one of the first to feel it, and w^e shall 
see how she alone withstood and finally overcame it. 

The better to understand the fierceness of the attack, let us 
first consider its origin : 

The Baltic Sea and the various gulfs connected with it pene- 
trate deeply the northern portion of the Continent of Europe. 
Its indentations form two peninsulas : a large one, known under 
the name of ISTorway and Sweden, and a lesser one on the south- 
west, now called Denmark. The first was known to the Eomans 
as Scania ; the second was called by them the Cimbric Cherso- 
nesus. From Scania is derived the name Scandinavians, after- 
ward given to the inhabitants of the whole country. Besides 
these two peninsulas, there are several islands scattered through 
the surrounding sea. 

The frozen and barren land which this people inhabited 
obliged them from time immemorial to depend on the ocean 
for their sustenance : first, by fishing ; later on, by piracy. They 
soon became expert navigators, though their ships were merely 
small boats made of a few pieces of timber joined together, and 
covered with the hide of the walrus and the seal. 

It seems, from the Irish annals, that they belonged to two 
distinct races of men : the ISTorwegians, fair-haired and of large 
stature; the Danes dark, and of smaller size. Hence the Irish 
distinguished the first, whom they called Finn Galls, from the 
second, whom they named Dubh Galls. By no other European 
nation was this distinction drawn, the Irish being more exact in 
observing their foes. 

It . is the general opinion of modern writers that they be- 
longed to the Teutonic family. The Goths, a Teutonic tribe, 
dwelt for a long period on the larger peninsula. But whether 
the Goths were of the same race as the ITorwegians or Danes is 
a question. Certain it is that the various German nations which 
first overwhelmed the Koman Empire bore many characteristics 
diff'erent from those of the Danes and ISTorwegians, though the 
language of all indicated, to a certain extent, a common origin. 

The Swedes, the • inhabitants of the eastern coast of Scania, 
do not appear to have taken an important part in the Scandi- 
navian invasions ; nor, indeed, have they ever been so fond of 
maritime enterprises as the two other nations. Moreover, they 
were at that time in bloody conflict with the Goths, and too 
busy at home to think of foreign conquest. 

For a long time the Scandinavian pirates seem to have con- 
fined themselves to scouring their own seas, and plundering the 
coasts as far as the gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. At length, 
emboldened by success, they ventured out into the ocean, at- 
tacked the nations of Western and Southern Europe, and in the 



108 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

west colonized tlie frozen shores pf the Shetland and Faroe 
Islands, and soon after Iceland and Greenland. 

For several centuries the harbors of Denmark and I^orway 
became the storehouses of all the riches of Europe, and a large 
trade Avas carried on between those northern peninsulas and the 
various islands of the [N'orthern and Arctic Seas, even with the 
coast of America, of which Greenland seems to form a part. 

Those stern and mountainous countries and the restless 
ocean which divides them were for the Scandinavian pirates 
what the Mediterranean and the coasts of Spain and Africa had 
long before been for the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. These 
peoples were clearly destined to introduce among modern na- 
tions the spirit of commerce and enterprise. 

But here it is well to consider their religious and social state 
from which nations chiefly derive their noble or ignoble quali- 
ties. "We shall find both made up of the rankest idolatry, of 
cruel manners and revolting customs. 

Their system of worship, with its creed and rites, is much 
more precise in character and better known to us than that of 
the Celts. If we open the books which were written in Europe 
at the time of the irruption of these JSTorthmen, and the poems 
of those savage tribes preserved to our own days, and comprised 
under the name of Edda, besides the numerous sagas, or songs 
and ballads, which we still possess, we find mention of three 
superior gods and a number of inferior deities, which gave a 
peculiar character to this l!^orthern worship. 

They were Thor, the god of the elements, of thunder chiefly ; 
"Wodan or Odin, the god of war ; and Frigga, the goddess of lust ; 
the long list of others it is unnecessary to give. Their religion, 
therefore, consisted mainly : 1. In battling with the elements, 
particularly on the sea, under the protection of Thor; 2. In 
slaying their enemies, or being themselves slain, as Odin willed 
— the giving or receiving death being apparently the great ob- 
ject of existence ; 3. In abandoning themselves at the time of 
victory to all the propensities of corrupt nature, which they took 
to be the express will of Frigga manifested in their unbridled 
passions. 

Such was Scandinavian mythology in its reality. 

Modern investigators, principally in Germany and France, 
find in the Edda a complete system of cosmogony and of a re- 
ligion almost inspired, so beautiful do they make it. At least 
they have made it appear as profound a philosophy as that of old 
Hindostan and far-off Thibet. By grouping around those three 
great divinities, which are supposed to be emblematical of the 
superior natural forces, their numerous progeny, that of Odin 
especially, together with an incredible number of malicious 
giants and good-natm*ed ases — a kind of fairy — any skilful theo- 



THE IRISH AND THE DANES. 109 

rist, gifted with tlie requisite imagination, may extract from tlie 
whole an ahnost perfect system of cosmogony and ethics. Then 
the disgusting legends of the Edda and the sagas are straightway 
transformed into interesting myths, offsprings of poetry and 
imagination, and conveying to the mind a philosophy only less 
than sublime, derived, as they say, from the religion of Zoro- 
aster. 

It is, as we said, in Germany and France chiefly that these 
discoveries have been made. The English, a more sober people, 
although of Scandinavian blood, do not set so high a value on 
what is, in the literal sense, so low. 

Pity that such pleasing speculations should be mere theo- 
retical bubbles, unable to retain their lightness and their vivid 
colors in the rude atmosphere of the arctic regions, bursting at 
the first breath of the north wind ! How could sensible men, 
under such a complicated system of religion and physics, account 
for the uncouth pirates of the Baltic ? 

As useless is it to say that they brought it from the place of 
their origin — Persia, as these theorists affirm. To a man unin- 
fluenced by a preconceived or pet system, it is evident at first 
sight that no mythology of the East or of the South has ever 
given rise to that of Scandinavia. There is not the slightest re- 
semblance between it and any other. It must have originated 
with the Scandinavians themselves ; and their long religious 
tales were only the bloody dreams of their fancy, when, during 
their dreary winter evenings, they had nothing to do but relate 
to each other what came uppermost in their gross minds. 

Saxo Grammaticus, certainly a competent authority, and 
Snorry Sturleson, the first to translate the Edda hito Latin, who 
is still considered one of the greatest antiquarians of the nation 
— both of whom lived in the times we speak of, when this re- 
ligious system still flourished or was fresh in the minds of all — 
solved the question ages ago, and demonstrated beforehand the 
falsehood of those future theories by stating with old-time sim- 
plicity that the abominable stories of the Edda and the sagas 
were founded on real facts in the previous history of those na- 
tions, and were consequently never intended by the writers as 
imaginative myths, representing, under a figurative and repulsive 
exterior, some semblance of a spiritual and refined doctrine. 

"We must look to our own more enlightened times to find 
ingenious interpreters of rude old songs first flung to the breeze 
nine hundred years ago in the polar seas, and bellowed forth in 
boisterous and drunken chorus during the ninth and tenth cen- 
turies by ferocious, but to modern eyes romantic, pirates reeking 
with the gore of their enemies. 

Because it has pleased some modern pantheist to concoct 
systems of religion in his cabinet, does it become at once clear 



110 THE IRISH AND THE DANES, 

that the mythic explanation of thos^ songs is the only one to be 
admitted, and that the odious facts which those legends express 
ought to he discarded altogether ? At least we hope that, when 
philosophers come to be the real rulers of the world, they will 
not give to their subtle and abstract ideas of religion tlie same 
pleasant turn and the same concrete expression in every-day life 
that the worshippers of Odin, Thor, and Frigga, found it agree- 
able to give when they were masters of the continent and rulers 
of the seas. 

1^0 ! The only true meaning of this Northern worship is 
conveyed in the simple words of Adam of Bremen, when relating 
what still existed in his own time. {DesGri2:)t. insula/pum Aquil., 
lib. iv.) He describes the solemn sacrifices of Upsala in Sweden 
thus : " This is their sacrifice ; of each and all animals they ofier 
nine heads of the male gender, by whose blood it is their custom 
to appease the gods. The dead bodies of the victims are sus- 
]3ended in a grove which surrounds the temple. The place is in 
their eyes invested with such a sacred character that the trees 
are believed to be divine on account of the blood and gore with 
which they are besmeared. With the animals, dogs, horses, etc., 
they suspend likewise men ; and a Christian of that country told 
me that he had himself seen them with his own eyes mixed up 
together in the grove. But the senseless rites which accompany 
the sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood are so many, and of so 
gross and immoral nature, that it is better not to speak of them." 

"We have here the naked truth, and no meaning whatever 
could be attached to such ceremonies other than that of the rank- 
est idolatry. To complete the picture, it is proper to state that 
Thor,Odin, and Frigga, were frightful idols, as represented in the 
TJ]3sala temple, and the small statues carried by the Scandinavian 
sailors on their expeditions and set in the place of honor on 
board their ships, were but diminutive copies of the hideous 
originals. It is known, moreover, that Odin had existed as a 
leader of some of their migrations, so that their idolatry resolved 
itself into hero-worship. 

Having spoken of their gods, we have only a word to add on 
their belief in a future state, for every one is acquainted with 
their brutal and shocking Walhalla. Yet, such as it was, admit- 
tance to its halls could only be aspired to by the warriors and 
heroes, the great among them ; the common herd was not deemed 
worthy of immortality. Thus aristocratic pride showed itself 
at the very bottom of their religion. 

Of their social state, their government, we know little. They 
lived under a kind of rude monarchy, subject often to election, 
when they chose the most savage and the bravest for their ruler. 
But blood-relationship had little or nothing to do with their 
system, so diflierent from that of the Celts. The sons of a chief- 



THE lEISH AND THE DANES. HI 

tain conld never form a sept, but at his death the eldest replaced 
him; the younger brothers, deprived of their titles and goods, 
were forced to separate and acquire a title to rank and honor by 
piracy ; and that right of primogeniture, which was the primary 
cause of their sea invasions, stamped the feudal system with one 
of its chief characteristics, a system which probably originated 
with them. Some, however, entertain a contrary opinion, and 
suppose that at the death of the father his children shared his 
inheritance equally. 

Of their moral habits we may best judge by their religion. All 
we know of their history seems to prove that with them might 
was right, and outlawry the only penalty of their laws. 

A man guilty of murder was compelled to quit the country, 
unless his superior daring and the number of his friends and fol- 
lowers enabled him, by more atrocious and wholesale murders, 
still to become a great chieftain and even aspire to supreme 
power. Iceland was colonized by outlaws from J^orway ; and 
the frequent changes of dynasty in pagan times prove that among 
them, as among barbarous tribes generally, brute force was the 
chief source of law and authority. 

That outlawry was not esteemed a stain on the character is 
sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that the mere accident of 
birth made outlaws of all the children of chieftains with the ex- 
ception of the eldest born ; the necessity for the younger sons 
abandoning their home and native country, and roaming the 
ocean in search of plunder, being exactly equivalent, according 
to their opinion and customs, to criminal outlawry of whatever 
character. This, at least, many authors assert without hesitation. 

Their domestic habits were fit consequences of such a state 
of society. There could exist no real tie of kindred, no filial or 
brotherly affection among men living under such a social system. 
The gratification of brutal passions and the most utter selfish- 
ness constituted the rule for all ; and even the fear of an inex- 
orable judge after death could not restrain them during life, as 
might have been the case among other pagan nations, since the 
hope of reaching their "Walhalla depended for its fulfilment on 
murder or suicide. 

"With their system of warfare we are better acquainted than 
with any thing else belonging to them, as the main burden of 
their songs was the recital of their barbarous expeditions. It is, 
indeed, difficult for a modern reader to wade through the whole 
of their Edda poems, or even their long sagas, so full is their 
literature of unimaginable cruelties. Yet a general view of it is 
necessary in order to understand the horror spread throughout 
Europe by their inhuman warfare. 

As soon as the warm breeze of an early spring thaws the ice 
on his rivers and lakes, the Scandinavian Yiking unfurls his sail. 



112 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

fills Ms rude boat with, provisions, and trusts himself to the mercy 
of tlie waves. Should lie be alone, knd not powerful enough to 
have a fleet at his command, he looks out for a single boat of his 
o-wn nation — there being no other in those seas. Urged by a 
mutual impulse, the two crews attach each other at sight ; the 
sea reddens with blood; the savage bravery is equal on both 
sides ; accident alone can decide the contest. One of the crews 
conquers by the death of all its opponents ; the plunder is trans- 
ferred to the victorious boat ; the cup of strong drink passes 
round, and victory is crowned by drunkenness. 

But if the two chieftains have contended from morning till 
night with equal valor and success, then, filled with admiration 
for each other, they become friends, unite their forces, and, falling 
on the first spot where they can land, they pillage, slay, outrage 
women, and give full sway to their unbridled passions. The 
more ferocious they are the braver they esteem themselves. It 
is a positive fact, as we may gather from all their poems and 
songs, that the Scandinavians alone, probably, of all pagan na- 
tions, have had no measure of bravery and military glory beyond 
the infliction of the most exquisite torture and the most horrible 
of deaths. 

Plunder, which was apparently the motive power of all their 
expeditions, was to them less attractive than blood ; blood, there- 
fore, is the chief burden of their poetry, if poetry it can be called. 
It would seem as though they were destined by ITature to shed 
human blood in torrents — the noblest occupation, according to 
their ideas, in which a brave man could be engaged. 

The figures of their rude literature consist for the most part 
of monstrous warriors and gods, each possessed of many arms to 
kill a greater number of enemies, or of giant stature to overcome 
all obstacles, or of enchanted swords which shore steel as easily 
as linen, and clave the body of an adversary as it would the air. 

Then, heated with blood, the llTorthman is also influenced 
with lust, for he worships Frigga as well as Odin. But this is 
not the place to give even an id.ea of manners too revolting to be 
presented to the imagination of the reader. 

Cantu's Universal History will furnish all the authorities 
from which the details we have given and many others of the 
same kind are derived. 

We do not propose describing here the horrors of the devas- 
t^ations committed by the Anglo-Saxons and Danes in England, 
by the ISTormans in France, Spain, and Italy. All these nations, 
even the first, were Scandinavians, and naturally fall under our 
review. The story is already known to those who are acquainted 
with the history of mediaeval Europe. The only thing which we 
do not wish to omit is the invariable system of warfare adopted 
by this people when acting on a large scale. 



THE IRISH AND THE DANES. 113 

Arrived on tlie coast tliey Iiad determined to ravage, they 
soon found that in stormy weather they were in a more dangerous 
position than at sea. Hence they looked for a deep bay, or, better 
still, the month of a large rive., and once on its placid bosom 
they felt themselves masters of the whole country. The terror 
of the people, the lack of organization for defence, so character- 
istic of Celtic or purely German o-Franco society, the savage 
bravery and reckless impetuosity of the invaders themselves, 
increased their rashness, and urged them to enter fearlessly into 
the very heart of a country which lay prostrate with fear before 
them. All the cities on the river-banks were plundered as they 
passed, people of whatever age, sex, or condition, were murdered ; 
the churches especially were despoiled of their riches, and the 
numerous and wealthy monasteries then existing were given to 
the flames, after the monks and all the inmates even to the school- 
children, had been promiscuously slaughtered, if they had not 
escaped by flight. 

But, although all were slaughtered promiscuously, a special 
ferocity was always displayed by the barbarous conqueror tow- 
ard the unarmed and defenceless ministers of religion. They 
took a particular delight in their case in adding insult to cruelty ; 
and not without reason did the Church at that time consider as 
martyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the pagan 
Scandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous idolatry showed 
its hatred of truth and holiness in always manifesting a pecul- 
iar atrocity when coming in contact with the Church of Christ 
and her ministers. And, our chief object in speaking of the 
stand made by the Irish against the pagan Danes is, to show how 
the clan-system became in truth the avenger of God's altars and 
the preserver of the sacred edifices and numerous temples with 
which, as we have seen, the Island of Saints was so profusely 
studded, from total annihilation. 

'Knowing that, when their march of destruction had taken 
them a great distance from the mouth of the river, the inhabitants 
might rise in sheer despair and cut them off on their return, the 
Scandinavian pirates, to guard against such a contingency, looked 
for some island or projecting rock, difficult of access, which they 
fortified, and, placing there the plunder which loaded their boats, 
they left a portion of their forces to guard it, while the remainder 
continued their route of depredation. In Ireland they found 
spots admirably adapted for their purpose in the numerous 
loughs into which many of the rivers run. 

This was their invariable system of warfare in the rivers of 
England ; in Germany along the Khine ; along the Seine, the 
Loire, and the Garonne, in France, as well as on the Tagus and 
Guadalquivir in Spain, where two at least of their large expeditions 
penetrated. This continued for several centuries, until at last 



114 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

they tlionglit of occupying the country wL^cli they had devastated 
and depopulated, and they began to form permanent settlements 
in England, Flanders, France, and even Sicily and ITaples. 

"When that time had arrived, they showed that, hidden under 
their ferocious exterior, lay a deep and systematic mind, capable of 
great thoughts and profound designs. Already in their own rude 
country they had organized commerce on an extensive scale, and 
their harbors teemed with richly-laden ships, coming from far dis- 
tances or preparing to start on long voyages. They had become a 
great colonizing race, and, after establishing their sway in the Heb- 
rides, the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, 
they made England their own, first by the Jute and Anglo-Saxon 
tribes, then by the arms of Denmark, which was at that tihie so 
powerful that England actually became a colony of Copenhagen ; 
and finally they thought of extending their conquests farther 
south to the Mediterranean Sea, where their ships rode at anchor 
in the harbors of fair Sicily. 

"We know, from many chronicles written at the time, with 
what care they surveyed all the countries they occupied, confis- 
cating the land after having destroyed or reduced its inhabitants 
to slavery ; dividing it among themselves and establishing their 
barbarous laws and feudal customs wherever they went. Dudo 
of St. Quentin, among other writers, describes at length in his 
rude poem the army of surveyors intrusted by Hollo, the first 
Duke of J^ormandy, with the care of drawing up a map of their 
conquests in France, for the purpose of dividing the whole among 
his rough followers and vassals. 

Of this spirit of organization we intend to speak in the next 
chapter, when we come to consider the Anglo-ISTorman invasion 
of Ireland ; but we are not to conclude that the l^orthmen became 
straightway civilized, and that the spirit of refinement at once 
shed its mild manners and gentle habits over their newly-con- 
structed towns and castles. For a long time they remained as 
barbarous as ever, with only a system more perfect and a method 
more scientific — if we may aj)ply such expressions to the case — 
in. their plunderings and murderous expeditions. 

Of Hastings, their last pagan sea-kong, Dudo, the great 
admirer of Northmen and the sycophant of the first l^orman 
clukes in France, has left the following terrible character, on 
reading which in full we scarcely know whether the poem was 
written in reproach or praise. We translate from the Latin. 

A ccording to Dudo, he was — 

" A wretch accursed and fierce of heart, 
Unmatched in dark iniquities ; 
A scowling pest of deadly hate, 
He throve on savao^e cruelties. 



THE IRISH AKD THE DANES. 115 

Blood-tliirsty, stained witli every crime, 

An artful, cunning, deadly foe. 
Lawless, vaunting, rash, inconstant. 

True well-spring of unending woe !" 

Hastings never yielded to the new religion, which he always 
hated and persecuted. But, even after their conversion to Chris- 
tianity, his countrymen for a long time retained their inborn love 
of bloodshed and tyranny ; they were in this respect, as in many 
others, the very reverse of the Irish. 

Of Rollo, the first Christian Duke of l!Tormandy, Adhemar, a 
contemporary writer, says : 

"On becoming Christian, he caused many captives to be 
beheaded in his presence, in honor of the gods whom he had 
worshipped. And he also distributed a vast amount of money 
to the Christian churches in honor of the true God in whose 
name he had received baptism : " which would seem to imply that 
this transaction occurred on the very day of his baptism. 

We may now compare the success which attended the arms 
of these terrible invaders throughout the rest of Europe with their 
complete failure in Ireland. It will be seen that the deep attach- 
ment of the Irish Celts for their religion, its altars, shrines, and 
monuments, was the real cause of their iinal victory. We shall 
behold a truly Christian people battling against paganism in jts 
most revolting and audacious form. 

But, first, how stood the case in England ? 

" It is not a little extraordinary," says a sagacious writer in 
the Diiblin Beview (vol. xxxii., p. 203), " that the three successive 
conquests of England by the Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and ISTormans, 
were in fact conquests made by the same people, and, in the last 
two instances, over those who were not only descended from the 
same stock, but who had immigrated from the very same localities. 
The Jutes, Angles, atid Saxons, were for the most part Danes or 
of Danish origin. Their invasion of England commenced by 
plunder and ended by conquest. These were overthrown by the 
Danes and Norwegians in precisely the same manner. 

"In the year 875, Eoll or EoUo, having been expelled from 
Norway by Harold Harfager, adopted the profession of a sea- 
kong, and in the short space of sixteen years became Duke of 
Kormandy and son-in-law of the French king, after having pre- 
viously repudiated his wife. The sixth duke in succession from 
Rollo was William, illegitimate son of Robert le Didble and 
Herleva, a concubine. By the battle of Hastings, which William 
gained in 1066, over King Harold, who was slain in it, the former 
became sovereign of England, and instead of the appellation of 
' the Bastard,' by which he had been hitherto known, he now 
obtained the surname of ' the Conqueror.' 



116 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

" Thus both the Saxon and Danish invaders were subdued by 
their ISTorman brethren." 

All the Scandinavian invasions of England were, therefore, 
successful, each in turn giving way before a new one ; and it is 
not a little remarkable that the very year in which Brian Boru 
dealt a death-blow to the Danes at Clontarf witnessed the com- 
plete subjection of England by Canute. 

The success of the ISTorthmen in France is still more worthy 
of attention. Their invasions began soon after the death of 
Charlemagne. It is said that, before his demise, hearing of the 
appearance of one of their fleets not far from the mouth of the 
Rhine, he shed tears, and foretold the innumerable evils it por- 
tended. He saw, no doubt, that the long and oft-repeated eflrorts 
of his life to subdue and convert the northern Saxons would fail 
to obtain for his successors the peace he had hoped to win by his 
sword, and, knowing from the Saxons themselves the relentless 
ferocity, audacity, and frightful cruelty, inoculated in their Scan- 
dinavian blood, he could not but expect for his empire the fierce 
attacks which were preparing in the arctic seas. All his life had 
he been a conqueror, and under his sway the Franks, whom he 
had ever led to victory, acquired a name through Europe for 
military glory which, he dreaded, would no longer remain untar- 
nished. His forebodings, however, could not be shared by any 
of those who surrounded him in his old age ; his eagle eye alone 
discerned the coming misfortunes. 

Seven times had the great emperor subdued the Saxons. 
He had crushed them eifectuaily, since he could not otherwise 
prevent them from disturbing his empire. The Franks, who 
formed his army, were therefore the real conquerors of Western 
Europe. Starting from the banks of the Ehine, they subjugated 
the north as far as the Baltic Sea ; they conquered Italy as far 
south as Beneventum, by their victories over the Lombards ; 
by the subjugation of Aquitaine, they took possession of the whole 
of France ; the only check they had ever received was in the 
valley of Roncevaux, whence a part of one of their armies was 
compelled to retreat, without, however, losing Catalonia, which 
they had won. 

JSTevertheless, we see them a few years after powerless and 
stricken with terror at the very name of the ^Northmen, as soon 
as Hastings and Hollo appeared. Those sea-rovers established 
themselves straightway in the very centre of the Frankish 
dominion ; for it was at the mouth of the Rhine, in the island of 
Walcheren, that they formed their first camp, i rom Walcheren 
they swept both banks of the Rhine, and, after enriching them- 
selves with the spoils of monasteries, cathedi'als, and palaces, they 
thought of other countries. Then beo-an the long series of 



THE lElSH AND THE DANES. 117 

spoliations whicli desolated tlie whole of France along the Seine, 
the Loire, and the Garonne. 

Opposition they scarcely encountered. Paris alone, of all the 
great cities of France, sustained along siege, and finally bought 
them off by tribute. The military power of the nation was an- 
nihilated all at once, and of all French history this period is un- 
doubtedly the most humiliating to a native of the soil. 

And now let us see how the Irish met the same piratical 
invasions. 

We are already acquainted with the chief defect of their po- 
litical system, namely, its want of centralization. The Ard-Eigh 
was in fact but a nominal ruler, except in the small province 
which acknowledged his chieftainship only. Throughout the rest 
of Ireland the provincial kings were independent save in name. 
jSTot only were they often reluctant to obey the Ard-Kigh, but 
they were not seldom at open war with him. llTor are we to 
suppose that, at least in the case of a serious attack from without, 
their patriotism overcame their private differences, and made 
them combine together to show a common front against a common 
foe. In a patriarchal state of government there is scarcely any 
other form of patriotism than that of the particular sept to which 
each individual belongs. All the ideas, customs, prejudices, are 
opposed to united action. 

Yet an invasion so formidable as that of the Scandinavian 
tribes showed itself everywhere to be, would have required all 
the energies and resources of the whole country united under one 
powerful chief, particularly when it did not consist of one single 
fearful irruption. 

During two centuries large fleets of dingy, hide-bound barks 
discharged on the shores of Erin their successive cargoes of 
human fiends, bent on rapine and carnage, and altogether proof 
against fear of even the most horrible death, since such death was 
to them the entry to the eternal realms of their Walhalla. 

But, at the period of which we speak, the terrible evil of a 
want of centralization was greatly aggravated by a change occur- 
ring in the line which held the supreme power in the island. 

The vigorous rule of a long succession of princes belonging 
to the northern Hy-Niall line gave way to the ascendency of the 
southern branch ot this great family ; and the much more limited 
patrimony and alliances of this new quasi-dy nasty rendered its 
personal power very inferior to that of the northern branch, and 
consequently lessened the influence possessed by the ruling 
family in past times. In Ireland the connections, more or less 
numerous, by blood relationship with the great families, always 
exercised a powerful influence over the body of the nation in 
rendering it docile and amenable to the will of the Ard-Righ. 

MuUingar, in West Meath, was the abode of the southern Hy- 



118 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

JSTialls, and Makcliy of tlie Shannpn, tlie first Ard-Rigli of this 
line, succeeded King Niall of Callan in 843. The Danes were 
aU'eady in the country and had committed depredations. Their 
first descent is mentioned by the Four Masters as taking place at 
Kathlin on the coast of Antrim in the year 790. 

But the country was soon aroused; and religious feelings, 
always uppermost in the Irish heart, supplied the deficiencies of 
the constitution of the state and the particularly unfavorable cir- 
cumstances of the period. The Danes, as usual, first attacked 
the monasteries and churches, and this alone was enough to kin- 
dle in the breasts of the people the spirit of resistance and retali- 
ation, lona was laid waste in 797, and again in 801 and 805. 
" To save from the rapacity of the Danes," says Montalembert in 
his Monks of the West, " a treasure which no pious liberality 
could replace, the body of S. Columba was carried to Ireland. 
And it is the unvarying tradition of Irish annals, that it was 
deposited finally at Down, in an episcopal monastery, not far 
from the eastern shore of the island, between the great monastery 
of Bangor in the ISTortli, and Dublin the future capital of Ireland, 
in the South." 

Ireland was first assailed by the Danes on the north immedi- 
ately after they had gained possession of the Hebrides ; but the 
coasts of Germany, Belgium, and France had witnessed their 
attacks long before. Eeligion was the first to sufter ; and as the 
Island of Saints was at the time of their descent covered with 
churches and monasteries, the Scandinavian barbarians found in 
these a rich harvest which induced them to return again and 
again. The first expedition consisted of only a few boats and a 
small body of men. IsTevertheless, as their irruptions were unex- 
pected, and the people were unprepared for resistance, many 
holy edifices sufiered from these attacks, and a great number of 
priests and monks were murdered. 

"We read that Armagh with its cathedral and monasteries was 
plundered four times in one month, and in Bangor nine hundred 
monks Avere slaughtered in a single day. The majority of the 
inmates of those houses fied with their books and the relics of 
their saints at the approach of the invaders, but, returning to their 
desecrated homes after the departure of the pirates, gave cause 
■ for those successive plunderings. 

But the Irish did not always fiy in dismay, as was the case in 
England and France. A force was generally mustered in the 
neighborhood to meet and repel the attack, and in numerous 
instances the marauders were driven «back with slaughter to their 
ships. 

For the clans rallied to the defence of the Church. Though 
the chieftains and their clansmen might seem to have failed 
fully to imbibe the spirit of religion, though in their insane feuds 



THE IRISH A¥D THE DAN'ES. 119 

they often turned a deaf ear to the remonstrances and reproaches 
of the bishops and monks, nevertheless Christianity reigned 
supreme in their inmost hearts. And when they beheld pagans 
landed on their shores, to insult their faith and destroy the mon- 
uments of their religion, to shed the blood of holy men, of conse- 
crated virgins, and of innocent children, they turned that bravery 
which they had so often used against themselves and for the 
satisfaction of worthless contentions into a new and a more 
fitting channel — the defence of their altars and the punishment 
of sacrilegious outrage. 

The clan system was the very best adapted for this kind of 
warfare, so ^gng as no large fleets came, and the pirates were too 
few in number and too sagacious in mind to think of venturing 
far inland. When but a small number of boats arrived, the inva- 
ders found in the neighborhood a clan ready to receive them. 
The clansmen speedily assembled, and, falling on the plundering 
crews, showed them how different were the free men of a Celtic 
coast, who were inspired by a genuine love for their faith, from 
the degenerate sons of the Gallo-Komans. 

So the annals of the country tell us that the " foreigners " 
were destroyed in 812 by the men of Umhall in Mayo ; by Cor- 
rach, lord of Killarney, in the same year ; by the men of Ulidia 
and by Carbry with the men of Hy-Kmsella in 827 ; by the clans- 
men of Hy-!Figeinte, near Limerick, in 834, and many more. 

But the hydra had a thousand heads, and new expeditions 
were continually arriving. In the words of Mr. Worsaae, a 
Danish writer of this century : 

" From time immemorial Ireland was celebrated in the Scan- 
dinavian north, for its charming situation, its mild climate, and 
its fertility and beauty. The Kongspell — mirror of Kings — which 
was compiled in ISforway about the year 1200, says that Ireland 
is almost the best of the lands we are acquainted with although 
no vines grow there. The Scandinavian Yikings and emigrants, 
who often contented themselves with such poor countries as 
Greenland and the islands in the north Atlantic, must, therefore, 
have especially turned their attention to the ' Emerald Isle,' 
particularly as it bordered closely upon their colonies in England 
and Scotland. But to make conquests in Ireland, and to acquire 
by the sword alone pernianent settlements there, was no easy 
task. . . . "When we consider that neither the Romans nor the 
Anglo-Saxons ever obtained a footing in that country, although 
they had conquered England, the adjacent isle, and when we 
further reflect upon the immense power exerted by the English 
in later times in order to subdue the Celtic population of the 
island, we cannot help being surprised at the very considerable 
Scandinavian settlements which, as early as the ninth century, 
were formed in that country." 



120 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

These are tlie words of a Dane. . We shall see what the " very 
considerable Scandinavian settlements " amonnted to ; the quota- 
tion is worthy of note, as presenting in a few words the motives 
of those who at any time invaded Ireland, and the stubborn 
resistance which they met. 

The Irish were not dismayed by the constant arrivals of those 
northern hordes. They met them one after another without 
considering their complexity and connection. They only saw a 
troop of fierce barbarians landed on their shores, chiefly intent 
U23on plundering and burning the churches and holy houses 
which they had erected ; they saw their island, hitherto protected 
by the ocean from foreign attack, and resting in the enjoyment 
of a constant round of Christian festivals and joyful feasts, now 
desecrated by the presence and the fury of ferocious pagans ; they 
armed for the defence of all that is dear to man ; and though, 
perhaps, at first beaten and driven back, they mustered in force at 
a distance to fall on the victors with a swoop of noble birds who 
fly to the defence of their young. 

This kind of contest continued for two hundred years, with 
the exception of the periods of larger invasions, when a single 
clan no longer sufficed to avenge the cause of God and humanity, 
and the Ard-Righ was compelled to throw himself on the scene 
at the head of the whole collective force of the nation in order to 
oppose the vast fleets and large armies of the Danes. 

The country sufiered undoubtedly ; the cattle were slain ; the 
fields devastated; the churches and houses burned; the poets 
silenced or woke their song only to notes of woe ; the harpers 
taught the national instrument the music of sadness ; the numer- 
ous schools were scattered, though never destroyed ; as centuries 
later, under the Saxon, the people took their books or writing 
materials to their miserable cottages or hid them in the mountain 
fastnesses, and thus, for the first time in their history, the hedge 
school succeeded those of the large monasteries. So the nation 
continued to live on, the energetic fire which burned in the 
hearts of the people could not be quenched. They rose and rose 
again, and often took a noble revenge, never disheartened by the 
most utter disaster 

On three diiferent occasions this bloody strife assumed a yet 
more serious and dangerous aspect. It was not a few boats only 
which came to the shores of the devoted island ; but the main 
power of Scandinavia seemed to combine in order to crush all 
opposition at a single blow. 

When the knowledge of the richness, fertility, and beauty oi 
the -island had fully spread throughout Denmark and IS'orway, a 
large fieet gathered in the harbors of the Baltic and put to sea. 
The fiimous Turgesius or Turgeis — Thorgyl in the Norse — was 
the leader. The Edda and Sagas of I^orway and Denmark have 



THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 121 

been examined witli a view to elucidate this passage in Irisli 
history, but thus flir fruitlessly. It is known, however, that 
many Sagas have been lost which might have contained an 
account of i-t. The Irish annals are too unanimous on the subject 
to leave any possibility of doubt with regard to it ; and, whatever 
may be the opinion of learned men on the early events in the 
history of Erin, the story of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries 
rests entirely on historical ground, as surely as if the facts had 
happened a few hundred years ago. 

Turgesius landed with his fleet on the northeast coast of the 
island, and straightway the scattered bands of Scandinavians 
already in the country acknowledged his leadership and flocked 
to his standard. McG-eoghegan says that " he assumed in his 
own hands the sovereignty of all the foreigners that were then in 
Ireland." 

From the north he marched southward ; and, passing Armagh 
on his route, attacked and took it, and plundered its shrines, 
monasteries, and schools. There were then within its walls seven 
thousand students, according to an ancient roll which Keating 
says has been discovered at Oxford. These were slaughtered or 
dispersed, and the same fate attended the nine hundred monks 
residing in its monasteries. 

Foraanan, the primate, fled ; and the pagan sea-kong, enter- 
ing the cathedral, seated himself on the primatial throne, and 
had himself proclaimed archbishop. — (O'Curry.) He had shortly 
before devastated Clonmacnoise and made his wife supreme head 
of that great ecclesiastical centre, celebrated for its many con- 
vents of holy women. The tendency to add insult to outrage, 
when the object of the outrage is the religion of Christ, is old in 
the blood of the northern barbarians ; and Turgesius was merely 
setting the example, in his own rude and honest fashion, to the 
more polished but no less ridiculous assumption of ecclesiastical 
authority, which was to be witnessed in England, on the part of 
Henry YIII. and Elizabeth. 

The power of the invader was so superior to whatever forces 
the neighboring Irish clans could muster, that no opposition 
was even attempted at first by the indignant witnesses of those 
sacrileges. It is even said that at the very time when the 
N^orthmen were pillaging and burning in the northeast of the 
island, the men of Munster were similarly employed in 
Bregia ; and Conor, the reigning monarch of Ireland, instead of 
defending the invaded territories, was himself hard at work 
plundering Leinster to the banks of the river Lifley, — (Haverty.) 
But, doubtless, none of those deluded Irish princes had yet heard 
of the pagan devastations and insults to their religion, and thus 
it was easy for the great sea-kong to strengthen and extend his 
power. For the attainment of his object he employed two pow- 



122 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

erful agents wliicli would have eflfectiially cruslied Ireland for- 
ever, if the springs of vitality in the nation had not been more 
than nsually expansive and strong. 

The political ability of the Danes began to show itself in Ire- 
land, as it did abont the same period (830) in England, and later 
on in France. Turgesins saw that, in order to subdue the nation, 
it was necessary to establish military stations in the interior 
and fortify cities on the coast, where he could receive reinforce- 
ments from Scandinavia. These plans he was prompt to put 
into practice. 

His mihtary stations would have been too easily destroyed by 
the bravery of the Irish, strengthened by the elasticity of their 
clan-system, if they were planted on land. He, therefore, set 
them in the interior lakes which are so numerous in the island, 
where his navy could repel all the attacks of the natives, unused 
as they were to naval conflicts. He stationed a part of his fleet 
on Lough Lee in the upper Shannon, another in Lough Neagh, 
south of Antrim, a third in Lough Lughmagh or Dundalk bay. 
These various military positions were strongholds which secured 
the supremacy of the Scandinavians in the north of the island 
for a long time. In the south, Turgesius relied on the various 
cities which his troops were successively to build or enlarge, 
namely, Dublin, Limerick, Gal way, Cork, Waterford, and Wex- 
ford. This first Scandinavian ruler could begin that policy only 
by establishing his countrymen in Dublin, which they seized 
in 836. 

Up to that time the Irish had scarcely any city worthy of the 
name. A patriarchal people, they followed the mode of life of 
the old Eastern patriarchs, who abhorred dwelling in large towns. 
Until the invasion of the Danes, the island was covered with 
farm-houses placed at some distance from each other. Here and 
there large duns or raths, as they were called, formed the dwell- 
ings of their chieftains, and became places of refuge for the clans- 
men in time of danger. Churches and monasteries arose in great 
numbers from the time of St. Patrick, which were first built in 
the woods, but soon grew into centres of population, eorrespond- 
in many respects to the idea of towns as generally understood. 

The I^orthmen brought with them into Ireland the ideas of 
cities, commerce, and municipal life, hitherto unknown. The 
introduction of these supposed a, total change necessary in the 
customs of the natives, and stringent regulations to which the 
people could not but be radically opposed. And strange was 
their manner of introduction by these northern hordes. Iveating 
tells us how Turgesius understood them. They were far worse 
than the imaginary laws of the Athenians as recorded in the 
" Birds " of Aristophanes. ITo more stringent rules could be 
devised, whether for municipal, rural, or social regulations ; and^ 



THE IRISH AND THE DANES. 123 

as tlie ISTortlimen are kno^^ai to have been of a systematic mind, 
no stronger proof of this fact conld be given. 

Keating deplores in the following terms the fierce tyranny of 
the Danish sea-kong : 

" The result of the heavy oppression of this thraldom of the 
Gaels under the foreigner vras, that great weariness thereof came 
upon the men of Ireland, and the few of the clergy that survived 
had fled for safety to the forests and wildernesses, where they 
lived in misery, but passed their time piously and devoutly, and 
now the same clergy prayed fervently to God to deliver them 
from that tyranny of Turgesius, and, moreover, they fasted against 
that tyrant, and they commanded every layman among the 
faithful, that still remained obedient to their voice, to fast against 
him likewise. And God then heard their supplications in as far 
as the delivering of Turgesius into the hands of the Gaels," 

Thus in the ninth century the subsequent events of the six- 
teenth and seventeenth were foreshadowed. The judicious editor 
of Keating, however, justly remarks, that this description, taken 
mainly from Cambrensis, is not supported in its entirety by the 
contemporaneous annals of the island; that the power of the 
Danes never was as universal and oppressive as is here sup- 
posed ; and that though each of the facts mentioned may have 
actually taken place in some part of the country, at some period 
of the Danish invasion, yet the whole, as representing the actual 
state of the entire island at the time, is exaggerated and of too 
sweeping a nature. 

It is clear, nevertheless, that the domination of the ]S[orthmen 
could not have been completely established in Ireland, together 
with their notions of superiority of race, trade on a large scale, 
and a consequent agglomeration of men in large cities, Avithout 
the total destruction of the existing social state of the Irish, and 
consequently something of the frightful tyranny just described. 

But the people were too brave, too buoyant, and too ardent 
in their nature, to bear so readily a yoke so heavy. They were 
too much attached to their religion, not to sacrifice their lives, if 
necessary, in order to put an end to the sacrilegious usurpations 
of a pagan king, profaning, by his audacious assumptions, the 
noblest, highest, purest, and most sacred dignities of holy 
Church. A man, stained with the blood of so many prelates and 
priests, seated on the primatial throne of the country in sheer 
derision of their most profound feelings ; his pagan wife ruling 
over the city which the virgins of Bridget, the spouses of Christ, 
had honored and sanctified so long ; their religion insulted by 
those who tried to destroy it — how could such a state of things 
be endured by the whole race, not yet reduced to the condition 
to which so many centuries of oppression subsequently brought 
it down ! 



124 THE IRISH AND THE DANES. 

Hence Keating could write c[irectly after the passage just 
quoted : " When the nobles of Ireland saw that Turgesius had 
brought confusion upon their country, and that he was assuming 
supreme authority over themselves, and reducing them to thral- 
dom and vassalage, they became inspired with a fortitude of 
mind, and a loftiness of spirit, and a hardihood and firmness of 
purpose, that urged them to work in right earnest, and to toil 
zealously in battle against him and his murdering hordes," 

And hereupon the faithful historian gives a long list of 
engagements in which the Irish were successful, ending with the 
victory of Malachi at Glas Linni, where we know from the Four 
Masters that Turgesius himself was taken prisoner and after- 
ward drowned in Lough Uair or Owell in West Meath, by order 
of the Irish king. 

This prince, then monarch of the whole island, atoned for the 
apathy and the want of patriotism of his predecessors, Conor 
and the ISTialls. He was in truth a saviour of his country, and 
the death of the oppressor was the signal for a general onslaught 
upon the " foreigners " in every part of the island. 

" The people rose simultaneously, and. either massacred them 
in their towns, or defeated them in the fields, so that, with the 
exception of a few strongholds, like Dublin, the whole of Ireland 
was free from the J^orthmen. Wherever they could escape, they 
took refuge in their ships, but only to return in more numerous 
swarms than before." — (M. Haverty.) 

It is evident that their deep sense of religion was the chief 
source of the energy which the Irish then displayed. They had 
not yet been driven into a fierce resistance by being forcibly 
deprived of their lands ; although the Danes, when they carried 
their vexatious tyranny into all the details of private life — not 
allowing lords and ladies of the Irish race to wear rich dresses 
and appear in a manner befitting their rank — when they went so 
far as to refuse a bowl of milk to an infant, that a rude soldier 
might quench his thirst with it — could have scarcely permitted 
the apparently conquered people to enjoy all the advantages 
accruing to the owner from the possession of land. Yet in none 
of the chronicles of the time which we have seen is any mention 
made of open confiscation, and of the survey and division of the 
territory among the greedy followers of tne sea-kong. We do 
not yet witness what happened shortly after in Kormandy imder 
RoUo, and what was to happen four hundred years later in Ire- 
land. The Scandinavians had not yet attained that degree of 
civilization which makes men attach a paramount importance to 
the possession of a fixed part of any territory, and call in surveys, 
title-deeds, charters, and all the written documents necessitated 
by a captious and over-scrupulous legislation. The Irish, conse- 
quently, did not perceive that their broad acres were passing into 



THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 125 

the control of a foreign race, and were being taken piecemeal 
from them, thus bringing them gradually down to the condition 
of mere serfs and dependants. 

What they did see, beyond the possibility of mistake or 
deception, was their religion outraged, their spiritual rulers, not 
merely no longer at liberty to practise the duties of their sacred 
ministry, but hunted down and slaughtered or driven to the 
mountains and the woods. They saw that pagans were actually 
ruling their holy isle, and changing a paradise of sanctity into a 
pandemonium of brutal passion, presided over by a superstitious 
and cruel idolatry. For surely, although the Irish chronicles fail 
to speak of it,» the minstrels and historians being too full of their 
own misery to think of looking at the pagan rites of their enemies 
— those enemies worshipped Thor and Odin and Frigga, and as 
surely did they detest the Church which they were on a fair way 
to destroy utterly. This it was which gave the Irish the courage 
of despair. For this cause chiefly did the whole island fly to 
arms, fall on their foes and bring down on their heads a fearful 
retribution. This it was, doubtless, which breathed into the new 
monarch the energy which he displayed on the field of Glas 
Linni ; and when he ordered the barbarian, now a prisoner in his 
hands, to be drowned, it was principally as a sign that he detest- 
ed in him the blasphemer and the persecutor of God's church. 

Thus did the first national misfortunes of this Celtic people 
become the means of enkindling in their hearts a greater love for 
their religion, and a greater zeal for its preservation in their 
midst. 

Ireland was again free ; and, although we have no details 
concerning the short period of prosperity which followed the 
overthrow of the tyranny we have touched upon, we have small 
doubt that the first object of the care of those who, under God, 
had worked their own deliverance, was to repair the ruins of the 
desecrated sanctuaries and restore to religion the honor of which 
it had been stripped. 

The Danes themselves came to see that they had acted rashly 
in striving to deprive the Irish of a religion which was so dear 
to their hearts ; they resolved on a change of policy, as they were 
still bent on taking possession of the island, which Mr. Worsaae 
has told us they considered the best country in existence. 

They resolved, therefore, to act with more prudence, and to 
make use of trade and the material blessings which it confers, in 
order to entice the Irish to their destruction, by allowing the 
N'orthmen to carry on business transactions with them and so 
gradually to dwell among them again. Father Keating tells the 
story in his quaint and graphic style : 

" The plan adopted by them on this occasion was to equip 
three captains, sprung from the noblest blood of Norway, and to 



126 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

send tliem witli a fleet to Ireland, for the object of obtaining 
some station for purpose of trade. And with them they accord- 
ingly embarked many tempting wares, and many valuable jewels 
— witli the design of presenting them to the men of Ireland, in 
the hope of thus securing their friendship ; for they believed that 
they might thus succeed in surreptitiously fixing a grasp upon 
the Irish soil, and might be enabled to oppress the Irish people 
again. . . . The three captains, therefore, coming from the 
ports of ISTorway, landed in Ireland with their followers, as if for 
the purpose of demanding peace, and under the pretext of estab- 
lishing a trade ; and there, with the consent of the Irish, who 
were given to peace, they took possession of scfme sea-board 
places, and built three cities thereon, to wit : Waterford, Dublin, 
and Limerick." 

We see, then, the Scandinavians abandoning their first pro- 
ject of conquering the JSTorth to fall on the South, and confining 
themselves to a small number of fortified sea-ports. 

The first result of this policy was a firmer hold than ever on 
Dublin, once already occupied by them in 836. " Amlaf, or 
Olaf, or Olaus, came from ISTorway to Ireland in 851, so that all 
the foreign tribes in the island submitted to him, and they ex- 
tracted rent from the Gaels." — (Four Masters.) 

From that time to the twelfth century Dublin became the 
chief stronghold of the Scandinavians, and no fewer than thirty- 
five Ostmen, or Danish kings, governed it. They made it an 
important emporium, and such it continued evdn after the Scan- 
dinavian invasion had ceased. McFirbis says that in his time — 
1650 — ^most of the merchants of Dublin were the descendants of 
the ISTorwegian Irish king, Olaf Kwaran ; and, to give a stronger 
impulse to commerce, they were the first to coin money in the 
country. 

The new Scandinavian policy carried out by Amlaf, who 
tried to establish in Dublin the seat of a kingdom which was to 
extend over the whole island, resulted therefore only in the 
establishment of five or six petty principalities, wherein the 
Northmen, for some time masters, were gradually reduced to a 
secondary position, and finally confined themselves to the opera- 
tions of commerce. 

Since the attempt of Turgesius to subvert the religion of the 
country, they never showed the slightest inclination to repeat 
it ; hence they were left in quiet possession of the places which 
they occupied on the sea-board, and gradually came to embrace 
Christianity themselves. 

Little is known of the circumstances which attended this 
change of religion on their part ; and it is certain that it did not 
take place till late in the tenth century. Some pi-etend that 
Christianity was brought to them from their own country, where 



THE lEISH AND THE DAJiTES. 127 

it had already been planted by several missionaries and bishops. 
But it is known that St. Ancharius, the first apostle of Den- 
mark, could not establish himself permanently in that country, 
and had to direct a few missionaries from Hamburgh, where he 
fixed his see. It is known, moreover, that Denmark was only 
truly converted by Canute in the eleventh century, after his 
conquest of England. As to l!Torway, the first attempt at its 
conversion by King Ilaquin, wdio had become a Christian at the 
court of Athelstan in England, was a failure ; and although his 
successor, Harold, appeared to succeed better for a time, pagan- 
ism was again reestablished, and fiourished as late as 995. It 
was, in fact, Olaf the Holy who, coming from England, in 1017, 
with the priests Sigefried, Budolf, and Bernard, succeeded in in- 
troducing Christianity permanently into [N^orway, and he made 
more use of the sword than of the word in his mission. 

"With regard to the conversion of the Danes in Ireland, it 
seems that, after all, it was the ever-present spectacle of the 
workings of Christianity among the Irish which gradually opened 
their eyes and ears. They came to love the country and the 
people when they knew them thoroughly ; they respected them 
for their bravery, which they had proved a thousand times ; they 
felt attracted toward them on account of their geniality of tem- 
perament and their warm social feelings ; even their defects of 
character and their impulsive nature were pleasing to them. 
They soon sought their company and relationship ; they began 
to intermarry with them ; and from this there was but a step to 
embracing their religion. 

The Danes of Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were, however, 
the last to abandon 2:)aganism, and they seem not to have done 
so until after Clontarf. 

It is very remarkable that, during all those conflicts of the 
Irish with the Danes, when the ITorthmen strewed the island 
with dead and ruins ; when they seemed to be planting their 
domination in the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and even the Isle of 
Man, on a firm footing ; when the seas around England and Ire- 
land swarmed with pirates, and new expeditions started almost 
every spring from the numerous harbors of the Baltic — the 
Irish colony of Dal Riada in Scotland, which was literally sur- 
rounded by the invaders, succeeded in wresting iN^orth Britain 
from the Picts, drove them into the Lowlands, and so com- 
pletely rooted them out, that history never more speaks of them, 
so that to this day the historical problem stands unsolved — 
"What became of the Picts ? — ^various as are the explanations 
given of their disappearance. And, what is more remarkable 
still, is, that the Dal Riada colony received constant help from 
their brothers in Erin, and the first of the dynasty of Scottish 
kings, in the person of Kenneth McxVlpine, was actually set on 



128 THE IRISH AND THE DANES. 

the throne of Scotland loj the arms of the Irish warriors, who, 
not satisfied apparently with theii* constant conflicts with the 
Danes on their own soil, passed over the Eastern Sea to the 
neighboring coast of Great Britain. 

During the last forty years of the tenth century the Danes 
lived in Ireland as though they belonged to the soil. If they 
waged war against some provincial king, they became the allies 
of others. When clan fought clan, Danes were often found on 
both sides, or if on one only, they soon joined the other. They 
had been brought to embrace the manners of the natives, and to 
adopt many of their customs and habits. Yet there always re- 
mained a lurking distrust, more or less marked, between the 
two races ; and it was clear that Ireland could n^ver be said to 
have escaped the danger of subjugation until the Scandinavian 
element should be rendered powerless. 

This antipathy on both sides existed very early even in 
Church affairs, the Christian natives being looked upon with a 
jealous eye by the Christian Danes ; so that, toward the middle 
of the tenth century, the Danes of Dublin having succeeded in 
obtaining a bishop of their own nation, they sent him to Eng- 
land to be consecrated by Lanfranc, the Archbishop, of Canter- 
bury, and for a long time the see of Dublin was placed under 
the jurisdiction of Lanfranc's successors. 

This grew into a serious difficulty for Ireland, as the capital 
of Leinster began to be looked upon as depending, at least 
spiritually, on England ; and later on, at the time of the inva- 
sion under Strongbow, the establishment of the English Pale 
was considerably facilitated by such an arrangement, to which 
Home had consented only for the spiritual advantage of her 
Scandinavian children in Ireland. 

And the Irish were right in distrusting every thing foreign 
on the soil ; for, even after becoming Christians, the Danes 
could not resist the temptation of making a last effort for the 
subjugation of the country. 

Sence arose their last general effort, which resulted in their 
final overthrow at Clontarf. It does not enter into our purpose 
to give the story of that great event, known in all its details to 
the student of Irish history. It is not for us to trace the various 
steps by which Brian Boru mounted to supreme power, and su- 
perseded Malachi, to relate the many partial victories he had 
already gained over the Northmen, nor to allude to his splendid 
administration of the government, and the happiness of the Irish 
under his sway. 

But it is our duty to point out the persevering attempts of 
the Scandinavian race, not only to keep its footing on Irish soil, 
but to try anew to conquer what it had so often failed to con- 
quer. For, in describing their preparations for this last attempt 



THE IKISH AND THE DANES, 129 

on a great scale, we but add another proof of that Irish stead- 
fastness which we have already had so many occasions to admire. 

In the chronicle of Adhemar, quoted by Lanigan from Labbe 
{I^ova Bill., MSS., Tom. 2, j9. 177), it is said that " the North- 
men came at that time to Ireland, with an immense fleet, con- 
veying even their wives and children, with a view of extirpating 
the Irish and occupying in their stead that very wealthy country 
in which there were twelve cities, with extensive bishoprics and 
a king." 

Labbe thinks the Chronicle was written before the year 1031, 
so that in his opinion the writer was a contemporary of the facts 
he relates.. 

The Irish Annals state, on their side, that " the foreigners 
were gathered from all the west of Europe, envoys having been 
despatched into ITorway, the Orkneys, the Baltic Islands, so that 
a great number of Yikings came from all parts of Scandinavia, 
with their families, for the purpose of a permanent settlement." 

Similar efforts were made about the same time by the Danes 
for the lasting conquest of England, which succeeded, Sweyn 
having been proclaimed king in 1013, and Canute the Great 
becoming its undisputed ruler in 1017. 

It is well known how the attempt failed in Erin, an army of 
twenty-one thousand freebooters being completely defeated near 
Dublin by Brian and his sons. 

From that time the existence of the Scandinavian race on 
the Irish soil was a precarious one ; they were merely permitted 
to occupy the sea-ports for the purpose of trade, and soon Irish 
chieftains replaced their kings in Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, 
and Cork. 

The reader may be curious to learn, in conclusion, what 
signs the Danes left of their long sojourn on the island. If we 
listen to mere popular rumor, the country is still full of the 
ruins of buildings occupied by them. The common people, in 
pointing out to strangers the remains of edifices, fortifications, 
raths,, duns, even round-towers and churches, either more ancient 
or more recent than the period of the ]^orse invasion, ascribe 
them to the Danes. It is clear that two hundred years of devas- 
tations, burnings, and horrors, have left a deep impression on the 
mind of the Irish ; and, as they cannot suppose that such power- 
ful enemies could have remained so long in their midst without 
leaving wonderful traces of their passage, they often attribute 
to them the construction of the very edifices which they de- 
stroyed. The general accuracy of their traditions seems here at 
fault. For there is no nation on earth so exact as the Irish in 
keeping the true remembrance of facts of their past history. 
ITot long ago all Irish peasants were perfectly acquainted with 
the whole history of their neighborhood ; they could tell what 
9 



130 THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 

elans had succeeded eacli other, the exact spots where such a 
party had beeu overthrown and such another victorious ; every 
village had its sure traditions printed on the minds of its in- 
habitants, and, by consulting the annals of the nation, the coin- 
cidence was often remarkable. How is it, therefore, that they 
were so universally at fault with respect to the Danes ? 

A partial explanation has been given which is in itself a 
proof of the tenacity of Irish memory. It is known that the 
Tuatha de Danaan were not only skilful in medicine, in the 
working of metals and in magic, but many buildings are gener- 
ally attributed to them by the best antiquarians ; among others, 
the great mound of ISTew Grange, on the banks of the Boyne, 
which is still in perfect preservation, although opened and pil- 
laged by the Danes — a work reminding the beholder of some 
Egyptian monument. The coincidence of the name of the 
Tuatha de Danaan with that of the Danes may have induced 
many of the illiterate Irish to adopt the universal error into 
which they fell long ago, of attributing jnost of the ancient 
monuments of their country to the Danes. 

The fact is, that the ruins of a few unimportant castles and 
churches are all the landniarks that remain of the Danish domi- 
nation in Ireland ; and even these must have been the product 
of the latter part of it. 

But a more curious proof of the extirpation of every thing 
Danish in the island is afforded by Mr. Worsaae, whose object 
in writing his account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, 
Scotland, and Ireland, was to glorify his own country, Denmark. 

He made a special study of the names of places and things, 
which can be traced to the Scandinavians respectively in the 
three great divisions of the British Isles ; and certainly the lan- 
guage of a conquering people always shows itself in many 
words of the conquered country, where the subjugation has been 
of sufficient duration. 

In England, chiefly in the northern half of the kingdom, a 
very great number of Danish names appear and are still pre- 
served in the geography of the country. In Mr. Worsaae's 
book there is a tabular view of 1,3Y3 Danish and ITorwegian 
names of places in England, and also a list of 100 Danish words, 
selected from the vulgar tongue, still in use among the people 
who dwell north of Watling Street. 

In Scotland, likewise — in the Highlands and even in the 
Lowlands — a considerable number of names, or at least of ter- 
minations, are still to be met in the geography of the country. 

Three or four names of places around Dublin, and the ter- 
minations of the names of the cities of Waterford, Wexford, 
Longford, and a few others, are all that Mr. Worsaae could find 
in Ireland. So that the language of the Irish, not to speak of 



THE lEISH AND THE DANES. 131 

their government and laws, remained proof against tlie long and 
persevering efforts made by a great and warlike IlTorthern race 
to invade the country, and substitute its social life for that of 
the natives. 

As a whole, the Scandinavian irruptions were a complete 
failure. They did not succeed in impressing their own national- 
ity or individuality on any thing in the island, as they did in 
England, Holland, and the north of France. The few drops of 
blood which they left in the country have been long ago absorbed 
in the healthful current of the pure Celtic stream ; even the lan- 
guage of the people was not affected by them. 

As for the social character of the nation, it was not touched 
by this fearful aggression. The customs of Scandinavia with 
respect to government, society, domestic affairs, could not influ- 
ence the Irish ; they refused to admit the systematic thraldom 
which the sternness of the IsTorthmen would engraft upon their 
character, and preserved their free manners in spite of all ad- 
verse attempts. In this country, Turgesius, Amlaf, Sitrick, and 
their compeers, failed as signally as other Scandinavian chief- 
tains succeeded in Britain and iNTormandy. 

The municipal system, which has won so much praise, was 
scornfully abandoned by the Irish to the Danes of the sea-port 
towns, and they continued the agricultural life adapted to their 
tastes. Towns and cities were not built in the interior till much 
later by the English. 

The clan territories continued to be governed as before. The 
" Book of Rights " extended its enactments even to the Danish 
Pale ; and the Danes tried to convert it to their own advantage 
by introducing into it false chapters. How the poem of the 
Gaels of Ath Cliath first found a place in the " Book of Rights " 
is still unknown to the best Irish antiquarians. John O'Dono- 
van concludes from a verse in it that it was composed in the 
tenth century, after the conversion of the Danes of Dublin to 
Christianity. It proves certainly that the Scandinavians in Ire- 
land, like the English of the Pale later on, had become attached 
to Erin and Erin's customs — had, in fact, become Irishmen, to 
all intents and purposes. !Not succeeding in making Northmen 
of the Irish, they succumbed to the gentle, influence of Irish 
manners and religion. 

As for the commercial spirit, the Irish could not be caught 
by it, even when confronted by the spectacle of the wealth it 
conferred on the "foreigners." It is stated openly in the annals 
of the race that their greatest kings, both Malachi and Brian 
Boru, did not utterly expel the Danes from the country, in order 
that they might profit by the Scandinavian traders, and receive 
through them the wines, silks, and other commodities, which the 
latter imported from the continent of Europe. 



132 THE IRISH AFD THE DANES. 

The same is true of tlie sea-faring life. The Irish could never 
he induced to adopt it as a profession, whatever may have been 
their fondness for short voyages in their curragh's. 

The only baneful effects which the JSTorse invasion exercised 
on the Irish were : 1. The interruption of studies on the large, 
even universal, scale on which they had previously been con- 
ducted ; 2. The breaking up of the former constitution of the 
monarchy, by compelling the several clans which were attacked 
by the " foreigners " to act independently of the Ard-Kigh, so 
that from that time irresponsible power was divided among a 
much greater number of chieftains. 

But these unfortunate effects of the iltTorse irruptions affected 
in no wise the Irish character, language, or institutions, which, 
in fact, finally triumphed over the character, language, and in- 
stitutions of the pirates established among them for upward of 
two centuries. 



CHAPTER YI. 

THE IRISH FEEE CLANS AND ANGLO-NORMAN FEUDALISM. 

The Danes were subdued, and the Irish at liberty to go on 
weaving the threads of their history — though,, in consequence of 
the local wars, they had lost the concentrating power of the 
Ard-E.igh — ^when treachery in their own ranks opened up the 
way for a far more serious attack from another branch of the 
great Scandinavian family — ^the Anglo-E'orman. 

The manners of the people had been left unchanged; the 
clan system had not been altered in the least ; it had sto«d the 
test of previous revolutions ; now it was to be confronted by a 
new system which had just conquered Europe, and spread itself 
round about the apparently doomed island. Of all places it had 
taken deep root in England, where it was destined to survive its 
destruction elsewhere in the convulsions of our modern history. 
That system, then in full vigor, was feudalism. 

In order rightly to understand and form a correct judgment 
on the question, and its mighty issues, we must state briefly what 
the chief characteristics of feudalism were in those countries 
where it flourished. 

The feudal system proceeded on the principle that landed 
property was all derived from the king, as the captain of a con- 
quering army ; that it had been distributed by him among his 
followers on certain conditions, and that it was liable to be for- 
feited if those conditions were not fulfilled. 

The feudal system, moreover, politically considered, supposed 
the principle that all civil and political rights were derived from 
the possession of land ; that those who possessed no land could pos- 
sess neither civil nor political rights— were, in fact, not men, but 
villeins. 

Consequently, it reduced nations to a small number of land- 
owners, enjoying all the privileges of citizenship; the masses, 
deprived of all rights, having no share in the government, no 
opportunity of rising in the social scale, were forever* condemned 
to villeinao-e or serfdom. , 



134 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

Feudalism, in oiir opinion, came first from Scandinavia. The 
majority of writers derive it from Germany. The question of 
its origin is too extensive to be included within our present lim- 
its, and indeed is unnecessary, as we deal principally with the fact 
and not with its history. 

"When the sea-rover had conquered the boat of an enemy, or 
desti-oyed a village, he distributed the spoils among his crew. 
Every thing was handed over to his followers in the form of a gift, 
and in return these latter were bound to serve him with the 
greatest ardor and devotedness. In course of time the idea 
of settling down on some territory which they had devastated 
and depopulated, presented itself to the minds of the rovers. The 
sea-kong did by the land what he had been' accustomed to do by 
the plunder : he parcelled it out among his faithful followers — 
fideles — giving to each his share of the territory. This was 
calledy^oA by the Anglo-Saxons, who were the first to carry out 
the system on British soil, as Dr. Lingard shows. Thus the word 
fief was coined, which in due time took its place in all the lan- 
guages of Europe. 

The giver was considered the absolute owner of whatever he 
gave, as is the commander of a vessel at sea. It was a henefiGium 
conferred by him, to which certain indispensable conditions were 
attached. Military duty was the first, but not the only one of 
these. Writers on feudalism mention a great number, the non- 
fulfilment of which incurred what was called forfeiture. 

In countries where the pirates succeeded in establishing them- 
selves, all the native population was either destroyed by them, 
as Dudo tells us was the case in l!Tormandy, or, as more frequent- 
ly happened, the sword being unable to carry destruction so far, 
the inhabitants who survived were reduced to serfdom, and com- 
pelled to till the soil for the conquerors ; they were thenceforth 
called villeins or ascrvpti glebce. It is clear that such only as pos- 
sessed land could claim civil and political rights in the new states 
thus called into existence. Hence the owning of land under 
feudal tenure was the great and only essential characteristic of 
mediaeval feudalism. 

This system, which was first introduced into Britain by the 
Anglo-Saxons, was brought to a fixed and permanent state by 
the ISTormans— followers of William the Conqueror ; and, when 
the time came for treachery to summon the l^orman knights to 
Irish soil, the devoted island found herself face to face with an 
iron system which at that period crushed and weighed down all 
Europe. 

The Normans had now been settled in England for a hun- 
dred years ; all the castles in the country were occupied by ISTor- 
man lords ;'all bishoprics filled by Norman bishops ; all monas- 
teries ruled by Norman abbots. At the head of the state stood 



CLANSHIP AFD FEUDALISM. 135 

the king, at that time Henry II. Here, more than in any other 
country in Europe, was the Iving the key-stone to the feudal 
masonry. ISTot an inch of ground in England was owned save 
under his authority, as enjoying the SK/premutn dominium. All 
the land had been granted by his predecessors as fiefs, with the 
right of reversion to the crown by forfeiture in case of the viola- 
tion of feudal obligations. Here was no allodial property, no cen- 
sitive hereditary domain, as in the rest of, otherwise, feudal Eu- 
rope. All English lawyers were unanimous in the doctrine 
that the king alone was the true master of the territory ; that ten- 
ure under him carried with it all the conditions of feudal tenure, 
and that any deed or grant proceeding from his authority ought 
to be so understood. 

The south-western portion of "Wales was occupied by l^or- 
man lords, Flemings for the most part. Two of these, Robert 
Fitzstephens and Maurice Fitzgerald, sailed to the aid "of the Irish 
King of Leinster. They were the first to land, arriving full a 
year before Strongbow. 

Strongbow came at last. The conditions agreed on before- 
hand between himself and the Leinster king were fulfilled. He 
was married to the daughter of Dermod McMurrough, chief of 
Leinster, acknowledged Eigh Dahma, that is, successor to the 
crown, while the Irish, accustomed for ages to admire valor and 
bow submissively to the law of conquest, admitted the claim. 
The English adventurer they looked upon as one of themselves 
by marriage. Election in such a case was unnecessary, or rather, 
understood, and Strongbow took the place which was his in their 
eyes by right of his wife, of head under McMurrough of all the 
clans of Leinster. 

When, a little later, came Henry II. to be acknowledged by 
Strongbow as his suzerain, and to receive the homage of the pre- 
sumptive heir of Leinster, submission to him was, in the eyes of 
the Irish, merely a consequence of their own clan system. They 
understood the homage rendered to him in a very different sense 
from that attached to it by feudal nations ; and had they had an 
inkling of the real intentions of the new comers, not one of them 
would have consented to live under and bow the neck to such a 
yoke. 

In fact, on the small territory where those great events were 
enacted, two worlds, utterly different from each other, stood face 
to face. Cambrensis tells us that the English were struck with 
wonder at what they saw. The imperialism of Rome had never 
touched Ireland. The Danes, opposed so strenuously from the 
outset, and finally overcome, had never been able to introduce 
there their restrictive measures of oppression. The English 
found the natives in exactly the same state as that in which Ju- 
lius Caesar found the Gauls twelve hundi-ed years before, except as 



136 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

to religion — the race governed patriarcliallj by cliieftains allied 
to their subordinates by blood relationship ; no unity in the gov- 
ernment, no common flag, no private and hereditary property, 
nothing to bind the tribes together except religion. ^ It was not a 
nation properly, but rather an agglomeration of small nations 
often at war each with each, yet all strongly attached to Erin — 
a mere name, including, nevertherless, the dear idea of country 
— the chieftains elective, bold, enterprising; the subordinates 
free, attached to the chief as to a common father, throwing them- 
selves with ardor into all his quarrels, ready to die for him at any 
moment. Around chief and clansmen circled a large number of 
brehons, shanachies, poets, bards, and harpers — ^poetry, music, 
and war strangely blended together. The religion of Christ 
spread over all a halo of purity and holiness ; large monasteries 
filled with pious monks, and convents of devout and pure virgins 
abounded ; bishops and priests in the churches chanting psalms, 
each accompanying himself with a many-stringed harp, gave forth 
sweet harmony, unheard at the time in any other part of the 
world. 

A most important feature to be considered is their under- 
standing of property. Plereditary right of land with respect to 
individuals, and the transmission of property of any kind by right 
of primogeniture, were unknown among them. If a specified 
amount of territory was assigned to the chieftain, a smaller por- 
tion to the bishop, the shanachy, head poet, and other civil officers 
each in his degree, such property was attached to the office and 
not to the man who filled it, but passed to his elected successor 
and not to his own children ; while the great bulk of the territory 
belonged to the clan in common. 'No one possessed the right to 
alienate a single rood of it, and, if at times a portion was granted 
to exiles, to strangers, to a contiguous clan, the whole tribe was 
consulted on the subject. Over the common land large herds of 
cattle roamed — the property of individuals who could own noth- 
ing, except of a movable nature, beyond their small wooden houses. 

This state of things had existed, according to their annals, for 
several thousand years. Their ancestors had lived happily un- 
der such social conditions, which they wished to abide in and 
hand down to their posterity. 

Foreign trade was distasteful to them ; in fact, they had no 
inclination for commerce. Lucre they despised, scarcely know- 
ing the use of money, which had been lately introduced among 
them. Yet, being refined in their tastes, fond of ornament, 
of wine at their feasts, loving to adorn the persons of their 
wives and daughters with silk and gems, they had allowed the 
Danes to dwell in their seaports, to trade in those commodities, 
and to import for their use what the land did not produce. 

Those seaport towns had been fortified by the JSTorthmen on 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 137 

their first victories wlien they took possession of them. Through- 
out the rest of the island, a fortress or a large town was not to be 
seen. The people, being all agriculturists or graziers, loved to 
dwell in the country ; their houses were built of wattle and clay, 
yet comfortable and orderly. 

The mansions of the chieftains were neither large architec- 
tural piles, nor frowning fortresses. They bore the name of raths 
when used for dwellings ; of duns when constructed with a view 
to resisting an attack. In both cases, they were, in part under 
ground, in part above ; the whole circular in form, built some- 
times of large stones, oftener of walls of sodded clay. 

Instead of covering their limbs with coats of mail, like the 
warriors of mediaeval Europe, they wore woollen garments even 
in war, and for ornaments chains or plates of precious metal. 
The I^orman invaders, clad in heavy mail, were surprised, there- 
fore, to find. themselves face to face with men in their estimation 
unprotected and naked. More astonished were they still at the 
natural boldness and readiness of the Irish in speaking before their 
chieftains and princes, not understanding that all were of the 
same blood and cognizant of the fact. 

Still less could they understand the freedom and familiarity 
existing between the Irish nobility and the poorest of their kins- 
men, so different from the haughty bearing of an aristocracy of 
foreign extraction to the serfs and villeins of a people they had 
conquered. 

The two nations now confronting each other had, therefore, 
nothing in common, unless, perhaps, an excessive pertinacity of 
purpose. The new comers belonged to a stern, unyielding, 
systematic stock, which was destined to give to Europe that great 
character so superior in om' times to that of southern or eastern 
nations. The natives possessed that strong attachment to their 
time-honored customs, so peculiar to patriarchal tribes, in whose 
nature traditions and social habits are so strongly intermingled, 
that they are ineradicable save by the utter extirpation of the 
people. 

And now the characteristics of both races were to be brought 
out in strong contrast by the great question of property in the 
soil, which was at the bottom of the struggle between clanship 
and feudalism. The Irish, as we have seen, knew nothing of 
individual property in land, nor of tenure, nor of rent, much less 
of forfeiture. They were ofteu called upon by their chieftains to 
contribute to their support in ways not seldom oppressive enough, 
but the contributions were always in kind. 

A new and very different system was to be attempted, to which 
the Irish at first appeared to consent, because they did not under- 
stand it, attaching, as they did, their own ideas to words, which, 
in the mouths of the invaders, had a very different meaning. 



138 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM, 

With tlie Irisli " to do homage " meant to acknowledge the 
superiority of another, either on account of his lawful author- 
ity or his success in war ; and the consequences of this act were, 
either the fuMlment of the enactments contained in the "Book 
of Eights," or submission to temporary conditions guaranteed 
by hostages. But that the person doing homage became by that 
act the liegeman of the suzerain for life and hereditarily in his 
posterity, subject to be deprived of all privileges of citizenship, 
as well as to the possibility of seeing all his lands forfeited, besides 
many minor penalties enjoined by the feudal code which often 
resolved itself into mere might — such a meaning of the word 
homage could by no possibility enter the mind of an Irishman at 
that period. 

Hence, when, after the atrocities committed by the first invad- 
ers, who respected neither treaties nor the dictates of humanity, 
not even the sanctuary and the sacredness of religious houses, 
Henry II. came with an army, large and powerful for that time, 
the Irish people and their chieftains, hoping that he would put 
an end to the crying tyranny of the Fitzstephens, Fitzgeralds, 
De Lacys, and others, went to meet him and acknowledge his 
authority as head chieftain of Leinster through Strongbow, and, 
perhaps, as the monarch who should restore peace and happiness 
to the whole island. McCarthy, king of Desmond, was the first 
Irish prince to pay homage to Henry. 

While the king was spending the Christmas festivities in Dub- 
lin, many other chieftains arrived ; among them O'Carrol of Oriel 
and O'Kourke of Brefihy. Roderic O'Connor of Connaught, 
till then acknowledged by many as monarch of Ireland, thought 
at first of fighting, but, as was his custom, he ended by a treaty, 
wherein, it is said, he aclmowledged Henry as his suzerain, and 
thus placed Ireland at his feet. Ulster alone had not seen the 
invaders ; but, as its inhabitants did not protest with arms in 
their hands, the ITormans pretended that from that moment they 
were the rightful owners of the island. 

Without a moment's delay they began to feudalize the coun- 
try by dividing the land and building castles. These two opera- 
tions, which we now turn to, opened the eyes of the Irish to the 
deception which had been practised upon them, and were the 
real origin of the momentous struggle which is still being waged 
to-day. 

Sir John Davies, the English attorney-general of James I., 
has stated the whole case in a sentence : " All Ireland was by 
Henry II. cantonized among ten of the English nation ; and, 
though they had not gained possession of one-third of the king- 
dom, yet in title they were owners and lords of all, so as nothing 
was left to be granted to the natives." 

McCarthy, king of Desmond, had been the first to acknowledge 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 139 

the autliority of Henry II., yet McCarthy's lands were among the 
first, if not the first, bestowed by Henry on his minions. The 
grant may be seen in "Ware, and it is worthy of perusal as a sam- 
ple of the many grants which followed it, whereby Henry at- 
tempted a total revolution in the tenure of land. The charter 
giving Meath to De Lacy was the only one which by a clause 
seemed to preserve the old customs of the country as to territory ; 
and yet it was in Meath that the greatest atrocities were com- 
mitted. 

Yet one difficulty presented itself to the invaders : their 
rights were only on paper, whereas the Irish were still in posses- 
sion of the greatest part of the island, and once the real purpose 
of the Normans showed itself, they were no longer disposed to 
submit to Henry or to any of his appointed lords. The territory 
had to be wrested from them by force of arms. 

The English claimed the whole island as their own. They 
were, in fact, masters only of the portion occupied by their troops ; 
the remainder was, therefore, to be conquered. And if in Des- 
mond, where the whole strength of the English first fell, they 
possessed only a little more than one-fourth of the soil, what was 
the case in the rest of the island, the most of which had not yet 
seen them ? 

Long years of war would evidently be required to subdue it, 
and the systematic mind of the conquerors immediately set about 
devising the best means for the attainment of their purpose. 
The lessons gathered from their continental experience suggested 
these means immediately ; they saw that by covering the country 
with feudal castles they could in the end conquer the most stub- 
born nation. A thorough revolution was intended. The two 
systems were so entirely antagonistic to each other that the suc- 
cess of the I^orman project involved a change of land tenure, 
laws, customs, dress — every thing. Even the music of the bards 
was to be silenced, the poetry of the files to be abolished, the 
pedigrees of families to be discontinued, the very games of the 
people to be interrupted and forbidden. A vast number of cas- 
tles was necessary. The project was a fearful one, cruel, barba- 
rous, worthy of pagan antiquity. It was undertaken with a kind 
of ferocious alacrity, and in a short time it appeared near realiza- 
tion. But in the long run it failed, and four hundred years later, 
Tinder the eighth Henry, it was as far from completion as the day 
on which the second Henry left the island in 1171. 

To show the importance which the invaders attached to their 
system, and the ardor with which they set about putting it in 
practice, we have only to extract a few passages from the old 
annals of the islands ; they are wonderfully expressive in their 
simplicity : 

"A. D. 1176. The English were driven from Limerick by 



140 OLxil^fSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

Donnall O'Brian. An Englisli castle was in process of erection 
at Ke\lsy—{Fotir Masters.) 

" A. D. 11Y8. The Englisli built and fortified a castle at 
Kenlis, tlie key of tliose parts of Meath, against the incursions 
of the Ulster men." — ( Ware^s Antiquities.) 

''A. D. 1180. Hugh De Lacy planted several colonies in 
Meath, and fortified the country with many castles, for the de- 
fence and security of the English." — {Ihid.) 

Such enumerations might be prolonged indefinitely ; we con- 
clude with the following entry taken from the Four Masters : 

"A. D. 1186. Hugh De Lacy, the profaner and destro.yer of 
many churches, Lord of the English of Meath (the Irish cannot 
call him their lord), Breffni, and Oirghialla, he who had con- 
quered the greater part of L^eland for the English, and of whose 
English castles all Meath^from the Shannon to the sea, was full, 
after having finished the castle of Der Magh, set out accompanied 
by three Englishmen to visit it. . . . One of the men of Tebtha, 
a youth named O'Miadhaigh, approached him, and with an axe 
severed his head from his body." 

So wide-reaching and comprehensive was the plan of the 
invaders from the. beginning that they felt confident of holding 
possession of Ireland forever ; and to effect this they must cer- 
tainly have intended to destroy or drive out the native race, or 
at best to make slaves of as many of them as they chose to keep. 
Thus they had prophecies manufactured for the purpose, and 
{^ambrensis, in his second book, chapter xxxiii., says confidently : 
" Prophecies promise a full victory to the English people .... 
and that the island of Hibernia shall be subjected and fortified 
with castles — literally incastellated, incastellatam — throughout 
from sea to sea." 

Meanwhile, together with the building of castles, the partition 
of the territory was being carried out. The ten great lords, 
among whom, according to Sir John Davies, Henry 11. had can- 
tonized Ireland, saw the necessity of giving a part of their large 
estates to their followers that so they might occupy the whole. 
McGeohegan compiles from "Ware the best view of this very in- 
teresting and comparatively unexplored subject. Curious details 
are found there, showing that, with the exception of Ulster, not 
only the geography, but even the most minute topography of the 
country, had been well studied by those feudal chieftains. Their 
characteristic love for system runs all tlirough these transactions. 

But the Irish had now seen enough. The whole country was 
.in a blaze. That kind of guerilla war peculiar to the Celtic clans 
began. The newly built castles were attacked and often captured 
and destroyed. Strongbow was shut up and besieged in Water- 
ford, which fell into the hands of the Danes. The latter sided 
everywhere with the Irish. Limerick changed hands several 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 141 

times, until Donnall O' Brian, who was left in possession, set fire 
to it rather than see it fall again into the hands of the invaders. 

In Meath, where the numerous castles of De Lacy were situ- 
ated, a war to the knife was being waged. O'Melachlin first 
tried persuasion, but in conference with De Lacy he dared inveigh 
loudly against the King of England, and, as his words must have 
expressed the feelings of the great majority of the i)eople, we 
give them : 

" JSTot with standing his promise of supporting me in the posses- 
sion of my wealth and dignities, he has sent robbers to invade my 
patrimony. Avaricious and sparing of his own possessions, he 
is lavish of those of others, and thus enriches libertines and prof- 
ligates who have consumed the patrimony of their fathers in 
debauchery." 

This manly protest was answered by the stroke of a dagger 
from the hand of Raymond Legros, and, after being beheaded, 
O'Melachlin was buried feet upward as a rebel. 

The monarch himself, Koderic O'Connor, finally appeared on 
the scene, beat the English at Thurles, and, marching into Meath, 
laid the country waste. 

Henry at last saw the necessity of adopting a milder policy, 
and O'Connor dispatching to England Catholicus O'Dufliy, Arch- 
bishop of Tuam, Lawrence O'Toole, of Dublin, and Concors, 
Abbot of St. Brendan, the Treaty of "Windsor was concluded, 
which was really a compromise, and yet remained the true law 
of the land for four hundred years. It may be seen in Eymer's 
" FoBdera." 

Sir John Davies justly remarks that by the treaty " the Irish 
lords only promised to become tributaries to King Henry II. ; 
and such as pay only tribute, though they are placed by Bodin 
in the first degree of subjection, yet are not properly subjects, but 
sovereigns ; for though they be less and inferior to the princes to 
whom they pay tribute, yet they hold all other points of sov- 
ereignty. 

"And, therefore, though King Henry had the title of Sovereign 
Lord over the Irish, yet did he not put those things in execu- 
tion, which are the true marks of sovereignty. 

" For to give laws unto a people, to institute magistrates and 
oflicers over them, to punish or pardon malefactors, to have the 
sole authority of making war or peace, are the true marks of 
sovereignty, which King Henry II. had not in Ireland, but the 
Irish lords did still retain all those prerogatives to themselves. 
For they governed their people by the Brehon law ; they ap- 
pointed their own magistrates and ofiicers ; . . . . they made 
war and peace one with another, without control ; and this they 
did not only during the reign of Henry II., but afterward in all 
times, even until the reign of Queen Elizabeth." 



142 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

By fin article of the tx*eaty the Irish were allowed to live in the 
Pale if they chose ; and even there they could enjoy their cus- 
toms in peace, as far as the letter of the law went. Many acts 
of Irish parliaments, it is true, were passed for the purpose of 
depriving them of that right, but without success. 

Edmund Spenser, himself living in the Pale in the reign of 
Elizabeth, speaks as an eye-witness of " having seen their meet- 
ings on their ancient accustomed hills, where they debated and 
settled matters according to the Brehon laws, between family and 
family, township and township, assembling in large numbers, and 
going, according to their custom, all armed." 

Stanihurst also, a contemporary of Spenser, had witnessed the 
breaking up of those meetings, and seen " the crowds in long 
lines, coming down the hills in the wake of each chieftain, he the 
proudest that could bring the largest company home to his 
evening supper." 

Here would be the proper place to speak of the Brehon law, 
which remained thus in antagonism to feudal customs for several 
centuries. Up to recently, however, only vague notions could be 
given of that code. But at this moment antiquarians are revis- 
ing and studying it preparatory to publishing the " Senchus 
Mor " in which the Irish law is contained. It is known that it 
existed previous to the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and 
that the laws of tanistry and of gavelkind, the customs of gossip- 
red and of fostering, were of pagan origin. Patrick revised the 
code and corrected what could not coincide with the Christian re- 
ligion. He also introduced into the island many principles of 
the Poman civil and canon law, which, without destroying the 
peculiarities natural to the Irish character, invested their code 
with a more modern and Christian aspect. 

Edmund Campian, who afterward died a martyr under Eliza- 
beth, says, in his "Account of Ireland," written in May, 1571 : 
" They (the Irish) speak Latin like a vulgar language, learned in 
their common schools' of leechcrafl and law, whereat they begin 
children, and hold on sixteen or twenty years, conning by rote 
the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the C%v%l Institutes, and a few 
other parings of these two faculties. I have seen them where 
they kept school, ten in some one chamber, grovelling upon 
couches of straw, their books at their noses, themselves lying 
prostrate, and so to chant out their lessons by piecemeal, being 
the most part lusty fellows of twenty-five years and upward." 

It was then after studies of from sixteen to twenty years that 
the Brehon judge — ^the great one of a whole sept, or the inferior 
one of a single noble family — sat at certain appointed times, in 
the open air, on a hill generally, having for his seat clods of earth, 
to decide on the various subjects of difference among neighbors. 

Sir James Ware remarks that they were not acquainted with 



CLAlifSHIP AiTD FEUDALISM. 143 

tlie laws of England. He might have better said, they preferred 
their own, as not coming from cold and pagan Scandinavia, but 
from the warm south, the greatest of human law-givers, the 
jurisconsults of Old Eome, and the holy expounders of the laws 
of Christian Eome. 

What were those laws of England of which "Ware speaks ? 
There is no question here of the common law which came into 
use in times posterior to Henry II,, and which the English de- 
rived chiefly from the Christian civil and canon law ; but of those 
feudal enactments, which the Anglo-N^ormans endeavored to 
introduce into Ireland, for the purpose of supplanting the old 
law and customs of the natives. 

There was, first, the law of territory, if we may so call it, by 
which the supreme ruler became really owner of the integral 
soil, which he distributed among his great vassals, to be redistrib- 
uted by them among inferior vassals. 

There was the law of primogeniture, which even to this day 
obtains in England, and has brought about in that country since 
the days of William the Conqueror, and in Ireland since the 
English " plantations " of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
the state of things now so well known to Europe. 

There was also the long list of feudal conditions to be ob- 
served, by the fulfilment of which the great barons and their 
followers held their lands. For their tenure was liable to hom- 
age and fealty, as understood in the feudal sense, to wardships 
and impediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to what 
English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and, 
finally, forfeitures ; this last was at all times more strictly ob- 
served in England than in any other feudal country, and by its 
enactments so many noble families have, in the course of ages, 
been reduced to beggary, and their chiefs often brought to the 
block. English history is filled with such cases. 

The law of wardship, by which no minor, heir, or heiress 
could have other guardian than the suzerain, and could not marry 
without his consent, was at all times a great source of wealth to 
the royal exchequer, and a correspondingly heavy tribute laid 
on the vassal. So profitable did the English kings find this 
law, that they speedily introduced it into Church affairs, every 
bishop's see or monastery being considered, at the death of the 
incumbent, as a minor, a ward, to be taken care of by the sove- 
reign, who enjoyed the revenues without bothering himself par- 
ticularly with the charges. 

There were, finally, the hunting laws, which forbade any 
man to hunt or hawk even on his own estate. 

Such were the laws of England, which Sir James Ware com- 
plains the Irish did not know. 

In signing the treaty of Windsor, the English king had appa- 



144 CLANSHIP A^B FEUDAXISM:. 

rently recognized in the person of Koderic O'Connor, and in tlie 
Irish through him, the chief rights of sovereignty over the whole 
island, except Leinster and, perhaps, Meath. But, at the same 
time, a passage or two in the treaty concealed a meaning cer- 
tainly unperceived by the Irish, but fraught with mischief and 
misfortune to their country. 

First, Roderic O'Connor acknowledged himself and his suc- 
cessors as liegemen of the kings of England ; in a second place, 
the privileges conceded to the Irish were to continue only so 
long as they remained faithful to their oath of allegiance. We 
see here the same confusion of ideas, which we remarked on the 
meaning given to the word homage by either party. The natives 
of the island understood to be liegemen and under oath in a 
sense conformable to their usual ideas of subordination ; the Eng- 
lish invested those words with the feudal meaning. 

All the calamities of the four following centm-ies, and, con- 
sequently, all the horrors of the times subsequent to the Prot- 
estant Reformation, were to be the penalty of that misunder- 
standing. 

Let us picture to ourselves two races of men so different as 
the Milesian Celts on the one side, and the Scandinavian Kor- 
man French on the other, having concluded such a treaty as that 
of "Windsor, each side resolved to push its own interpretation 
to the bitter end. 

The English are in possession of a territory clearly enough 
defined, but they are ever on the alert to seize any opportunity 
of a real or pretended violation of it, in order to extend their 
limits and subjugate the whole island. Yet they are bound to 
allow the Brehon Irish to live in their midst, governed by their 
own customs and laws. Moreover, they acknowledge that the 
former great Irish lords of the very country which they occupy 
are not mere Irish, but of noble blood ; for, from the beginning, 
the English recognized five families of the country, known as 
the " five bloods," as pure and noble, in theory at least. 

The Irish without the Pale are acknowledged as perfectly 
independent, completely beyond English control, with their own 
magistrates and laws, even that of war ; subject only to tribute. 
But, at the same time, this independence is rendered absolutely 
insecure by the imposition of conditions, whose meaning is well 
known and perfectly understood in all the countries conquered 
by the Scandinavians, but utterly beyond the comprehension of 
the Irish. 

The consequence is clear : war began with the conclusion of 
the treaty — a war which raged for four centuries, until a new 
and more powerful incentive to slaughter and desolation showed 
itself in the Reformation, ushered in by Henry YIII. 

First came a general rebellion. This is the word used by 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 145 

"Ware, wlieii Jolm, a boy of twelve years of a^2;e, was dispatched 
by liis father Henry, with the title of Lord of Ireland, to receive 
the submission of various Irish lords at Waterford, where he 
landed. " The young English gentlemen," says Cambrensis, 
who was a witness of the scene, " used the Irish chieftains with 
scorn, because," as he says, " their demeanor was rude and bar- 
barous." The Irish naturally resented this treatment from a lad, 
as they wouid have resented it from his father ; and they retired 
in wrath to take up arms and raise the whole land to " rebeEion." 

This solemn protest was not without effect in Europe. At 
the beginning of the reign of Richard L, Clement III., on ap- 
pointing, by the king's request, William de Longchamps, Bishop 
of Ely, as his legate in England, Wales, and Ireland, took good 
care to limit the authority of this prelate to those parts of Ire- 
land which lay under the jurisdiction of the Earl of Moreton — 
that is, of John, brother to Richard. He had power to exercise 
his jurisdiction " in Anglia, Wallia, et illis Hibernise partibus in 
quibus Joannes Moretonii Comes potestatem habet et domini- 
um." — {Ifatth. Pai'is.) It would seem, then, that Clement III. 
knew nothing of the bull of Adrian lY. 

The war, as we said, was incessant. England finally so de- 
spaired of conquering the country, that some lords of the court 
of Henry YI. caused him to write letters to some of his " Irish 
enemies," urging the latter to effect the conquest of the island in 
the king's name. This was assuredly a last resource, which his- 
tory has never recorded of any other nation warring on a rival. 
But even in this England failed. Those lords — the " Irish ene- 
mies " of King Henry YI. — sent his letters to the Duke of York, 
then Lord-Lieutenant, " and published to the world the shame 
of England." — {Sir John Davies.) 

The result was that, at the end of the reign of Henry YI., 
the Irish, in the words of the same author, "became victorious 
over all, without blood or sweat ; only that little canton of land, 
called the English Pale, containing four small shires, maintained 
yet a bordering war with the Irish, and retained the form of 
English government." 

Feudalism was thus reduced in Ireland to the small territory 
lying between the Boyne and the Liffey, subject to the constant 
annoyance of the O'Moores, O' Byrnes, and O'Cavanaghs. And 
this state of affairs continued until the period of the so-called 
Reformation in England. 

Ireland proved itself then the only spot in Western Europe 
where feudal laws and feudal customs could take no root. 
Through all other nations of the Continent those laws spread by 
degrees, from the countries invaded by the Northmen, into the 
most distant parts, modified and mitigated in some instances by 
the innate power of resistance left by former institutions. In 
10 



146 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

this small island alone, where clanship still held its own, feudal- 
ism proved a complete failure. We merely record a fact, sug- 
gestive, indeed, of thought, which x^roves, if no more, at least 
that the Celtic nature is far more persevering and steady of pur- 
pose than is generally supposed. 

But a more interesting spectacle still awaits us — that of the 
English themselves morally overcome and won over by the ex- 
ample of their antagonists, renouncing their feudal usages, and 
adopting manners which they had at first deemed rude and bar- 
barous. ' 

The treaty of Windsor, which was subsequently confirmed 
by many diplomatic enactments, obliged King Henry III. of 
England to address O'Brien of Thomond in the following words : 
" j^ex regi Thomond saluteinP The same English monarch was 
compelled to give O'Neill of Ulster the title of Rex, after having 
used, inadvertently perhaps, that of jRegulus. — {Sir John Davies.) 
Both O'Brien and O'lsTeill lived in the midst of a thickly popu- 
lated Irish district, with a few great English lords shut up in 
their castles on the borders of the respective territory of the 
clans. 

The ISTorman lords in many parts of the country lived right 
in the midst of an Irish population, with its Brehon judges, 
shanachies, harpers, and other officers, attached to their customs 
of gossipred, fostering, tanistry, gavelkind, and other usages, 
which the parliaments of Drogheda, Kilkenny, Dublin, Trim, 
and other places, were soon to declare lewd and 'barbarous. The 
question of the moment was : Which of the two systems, clan- 
ship or feudalism, brought thus into close contact and antago- 
nism, was to prevail ? 

Ere long it began to appear that the aversion first felt by the 
English lords at such strange customs was not entirely invin- 
cible, and many of them even went so far as to choose wives 
from among the native families. In fact, there lay a great 
example before their eyes from the outset, in the marriage of 
Strongbow with Eva, the daughter of McMurrough. Intermar- 
riage soon became the prevailing custom ; so that the posterity 
of the first invaders was, after all, to have Celtic blood in its 
veins. 

Hence, a distinction arose between the English by blood and 
the English by birth. The first had, indeed, an English name ; 
but they were born in the island, and soon came to be known as 
degenerate English. — That degeneracy was merely the moral 
eft'ect of constant intercourse with the natives of their neigh- 
borhood. — The others were continually shifting, being always 
composed of the latest new-comers from England. 

It is something well worthy of remark that a residence of a 
short duration sufficed to blend in unison two natures so opposed 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 147 

as the Irisli and the English. The latter, not content with wed- 
ding Irish wives, sent their own children to be fostered by their 
Irish friends ; and the children naturally came from the nursery 
more Irish than their fathers. They objected no longer to be- 
coming gossips for each other at christenings, to adopt the dress 
of their foster-parents, whose language W'as in many cases the 
only one which they brought from their foster-home. 

Thus Ireland, even in districts which had been thoroughly 
devastated by the first invaders, became the old Ireland again; 
and the song of the bard and the melody of the harper were 
heard in the English castle as well as in the Irish rath.^ 

The nationalization of their kin, which received a powerful 
impetus from the fact that the English who lived without the 
Pale escaped feudal exactions and penalties from the impossibil- 
ity of enforcing the feudal laws on Irish territory, alarmed the 
Anglo-ITormans by birth, in whose hand rested the engine of 
the government ; and, looking around for a remedy, they could 
discover nothing better than acts of Parliament. 

"We have not been able to ascertain the precise epoch in which 
the first Irish Parliament was convened ; indeed, to this day, it 
seems a debated question. The general belief, however, ascribes 
it to King John. The first mention of it by Ware is under the 
year 1333, as late as Edward III., more than one hundred and 
fifty years after the Conquest. But the need of stringent rules 
to keep the Irish at bay, and prevent the English from "degen- 
eratingj" became so urgent that, in 1367, the famous Parliament 
met at Kilkenny, and enacted the bill known as the " Statutes 
of Kilkenny," in which the matter was fully elaborated, and a 
new order of things set on foot in Ireland. 

The Irish could recognize no other Parliament than their 
ancient Feis ', and, these having been discontinued for several 
centuries, they showed their appreciation of the new English in- 
stitution in the manner described by Ware under the year 1413 : 
" On the 11th of the calends of Eebruary, the morrow after St. 
Matthias day, a Parliament began at Dublin, and continued for 
the space of fifteen days ; in which time the Irish burned all that 
stood in their way, as their usual custom was in times of other 
Parliaments." 

The reader who is acquainted with the enactments which go 
by the name of the " Statutes of Kilkenny " will scarcely wonder 
at this mode of proceeding. 

Neither at that period, nor later on save once under Henry 

* The process of gaining over an Englishman to Irish manners is admirably de- 
scribed in the " Moderate Cavalier," under Cromwell, quoted by Mr. J, P. Prender- 
gast in his second edition of the " Cromwellian Settlement," p. 263. If this process 
were common with the Protestant officers of Cromwell, how much more so with 
Catholic Anglo-Normans ! 



148 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

YIII., was tlie Irish race represented in those assemblies. In 
the reign of Edward III. no Irish native nor old English resi- 
dent assisted at the Parliament of Kilkenny, but only English- 
men newly arrived; for all its acts were directed against the 
Irish and the degenerate English — against the latter particularly. 
How the members composing these Parliaments were elected at 
that time we do not know ; but they were not summoned from 
more than twelve counties, which number, first established by 
King John, gradually dwindled, until, in the reign of Henry 
YIL, it was reduced to four, so that the Ikish Parliament came 
to be composed of a few men, and those few representatives of 
purely English interests. 

A true history of the times would demand an examination of 
the various enactments made by these so-called Irish Parlia- 
ments, as setting forth more distinctly than any thing else could 
do the points at variance between the two nations. Our space, 
however, and indeed our purpose, forbids this. In order to 
put the reader in possession of at least an idea of the difficulties 
on either side, we add a few extracts from the very famous 
" Statutes of Kilkenny." 

The preamble sets forth " that already the English in Ireland 
were mere Irish in their language, names, apparel, and their 
manner of living, and had rejected the English laws and sub- 
mitted to the Irish, with whom they had many marriages and 
alliances, which tended to the utter ruin and destruction of the 
commonwealth." And then the Statutes go on to enact — we 
cull from various chapters : " The English cannot any more make 
peace or war with the Irish without special warrant ; it is made 
penal to the English to permit the Irish to send their cattle to 
graze upon their land ; the Irish could not be presented by the 
English to any ecclesiastical benefice ; they — the Irish— could 
not be received into any monasteries or religious houses; the 
English could not entertain any of their, bards, or poets, or 
shanachies," etc. 

This extraordinary legislation proves beyond any amount of 
facts to what degree the posterity of the first ISTorman invaders 
of Ireland had adopted Irish customs, and made themselves one 
with the natives. 

The Irish, therefore, had, in this instance, morally conquered 
their enemies, and feudalism was defeated. Another example 
was given of the invariable invasions of the island. The enemy, 
however successful at the beginning, was compelled finally to 
give way to the force of resistance in this people ; and the time- 
honored customs of an ancient race survived all attempts at vio- 
lent foreign innovations. The posterity of those proud nobles, 
who, witli Giraldus Cambrensis, had found nothing but what 
was contemptible in this nation, so strange to their eyes, who 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 149 

looked upon them as an easy victim to be despoiled of their land, 
and that land to be occupied by them, that posterity adopted, 
within, comparatively speaking, a few years, the life and man- 
ners of the inet'e Irish in their entirety. Feudalism they re- 
nounced for the clan. Each of the great English families that 
first landed in the island had formed a new sept, and the clans 
of the Geraldines, De Courcys, and others, were admitted into 
full copartnership with the old Milesian septs. Thus the two 
great families of the Bm^kes in Connaught called their chiefs 
McWilliams Either and McWilliams Oughter. The Berming- 
hams had become McYoris ; the Dixons, McJordans ; the Mangles, 
McCastellos. Other old English families were called McHub- 
bard, McDavid, etc. ; one of the Geraldine septs was known as 
McMorice, another as McGibbon ; the chief of Dunboyne's house 
became McPheris. 

Meanwhile, " it was manifest," says Sir John Davies, " that 
those who had the government of Ireland under the crown of 
England intended to make a perpetual separation and enmity 
between the English settled in Ireland and the Irish, in the ex- 
pectation that the English should in the end Toot out the Irish." 

There is no doubt that, if these laws of Kilkenny could have 
been enforced and carried out, as they were meant to be, the 
eifect hoped for by these legislators might have been the natural 
result. Yet even much later on, at a period, too, when the 
English power was considerably- increased, under Henry VIIL, 
a very curious discussion of this possibility, which took place at 
the time, did not by any means promise an easy realization. 
The following passage of the " State Papers," under the great 
Tudor, contains a rather sensible view of the subject, and is not 
so sanguine of the success of the hopes cherished by the attor- 
ney -genei-al of James I. : 

' " The lande is very large — by estimation as large as Eng- 
lande — so that, to enhabit the whole with new inhabiters, the 
number would be so great that there is no prince christened that 
commodiously might spare so many subjects to depart out of his 
regions. . . . But to enterprise the whole extirpation and totall 
destruction of all the Irishmen of the lande, it would be a mar- 
vellous and sumptuous charge -and great difficulty, considering 
both the lack of enhabitors, and the great hardness and misery 
these Irishmen can endure, both of hunger, colde, and thirst, and 
evill lodging, more than the inhabitants of any other lande." 

There were, therefore, evidently difficulties in the way ; yet 
it is certain that the question of the total extirpation of the Irish 
has been entertained for centuries by a class of English states- 
men, and confidently looked for by the English nation. Sir 
John Davies, as we see, attributes no other object to the Statutes 
of Kilkenny. 



150 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

But could those statutes be enforced ? were they ever en- 
forced ? The same writer pretends that they were for " several 
years ; " but the sequel proves that they were not. The reason 
which he assigns' for their execution — that for a certain time after 
that Parliament there was peace in the island — leads us to 
believe the contrary; for if, as he himself justly remarks 
before, the intention of the legislators was to create a perpetual 
separation and enmity between the two races, the promulgation 
and strict execution of those statutes would have immediately 
enkindled a war which could have ended only with the total 
extirpation of one race or the other. 

And the further fact that it was thought necessary to reenact 
those odious laws frequently in subsequent Irish JParliaments 
proves that they were not carried into execution, since new legis- 
lation on the subject was demanded. 

It is true that events, transmitted to us either through the 
Irish annals or the English chronicles, show that several attempts 
were made to enforce those acts of Kilkenny, chiefly against the 
Fitz-Thomases or Geraldines of Desmond, who pretended, even 
after their enactment, to be as independent of them as before, 
and refused to attend the Parliament when convoked, claiming 
the strange privilege " that the Earls of Desmond should never 
come to any Parliament or Grand Council, or within any walled 
town, but at their will or pleasure." And the Desmonds con- 
tinued in their persistent opposition to the English laws until 
the reign of Elizabeth. 

But it was against Churchmen chiefly that they were carried 
out in fall ; for we occasionally meet in the annals of the country 
with instances where some English prelate in Ireland had been 
prosecuted for having conferred orders on mere Irishmen, and 
that some Norman abbots had been deposed for having received 
mere Irishmen as monks into their monasteries. 

"With the exception of a few cases of this kind, no proof can 
be furnished that any material change was brought about in the 
relations of the old English settlers with their Irish neighbors. 
In fact, matters progressed so favorably in this friendly direc- 
tion, that at length the descendants of Strongbow and his followers 
became, as is well known, " Hibernicis Hiberniciores," and the 
judges sent from England could hold their circuit only in the 
four comities between the Lifiey and the Boyne ; and the name 
given to the majority of the old English families was " English 
rebels," while the natives were called " Irish enemies." 

Sir John Davies himself is forced to admit it : " "When the civil 
government grew so weak and so loose that the English lords 
would not suft'er the English laws to be executed within their terri- 
tories and seigniories, but in place thereof both they and their peo- 
ple embraced the Irish customs, then the state of things, like a 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 151 

game at Irisli, was so turned aboiit,- that the English, who hoped 
to make a perfect conquest of the Irish, were by them perfectly 
and absolutely conquered, because Victi victorious leges dedereP 

The truth could not be expressed in more explicit terms. Yet 
all has not been said. The same persevering character, making 
headway against apparently insurmountable obstacles, shows 
itself conspicuously in the Irish, in the preservation of their 
land, which, after all, was the great object of contention between 
the two races. 

The first Anglo-ISTorman invaders, including Henry II. him- 
self, had no other object in view than gradually to occupy the 
whole territory, subject it to the feudal laws, give to Englishmen 
the position of feudal lords, and reduce the Irish to that of vil- 
leins, if they could not succeed in rooting them out. 

A few years later, by the Treaty of Windsor, the king seemed 
to confine his pretensions to Leinster, and perhaps Meath, and 
expressly allowed the natives to keep their lands in the other 
districts of the island. Yet none of his former grants, by which 
" he had cantonned the whole island between ten Englishmen," 
were recalled ; they continued as part of and means to shape the 
policy of the invaders, and subsequent Parliaments always sup- 
posed the validity of those former grants made to Strongbow and 
his followers. 

It is true that those posterior Acts of Parliament did not 
merely rely for their strength on the first documents, but on the 
pretence that the Irish chieftains and people outside of Leinster 
and Meath had justly forfeited their estates by not fulfilling the 
conditions virtually contained in the Windsor Treaty, in which 
they had professed homage and suhnission to the English king. 
It is clear that, lawfully or unlawfully, the Anglo-ISTormans were 
determined to gain possession, sooner or later, of the whole island. 

To secure their end, they declared that the natives would not 
be subject to the English laws, but retain their Brehon laws, 
which in their eyes were no laws at all, and which the Parlia- 
ment of Kilkenny had declared to be " lewd customs," Hence- 
forth, then, the natives were out of the pale of the law, could not 
claim its protection, but became subject to the crown of England, 
without political, civil, or even human rights. 

They were soon, by reason of the constant border wars all 
around the Pale, declared " alien and enemies." And these ex- 
pressions became, in the eyes of the English lawyers, identical 
with the Irish race and the Irish nature ; so that at all times, peace 
or war, even when the Irish fought in the English ranks, aiding 
the Plantagenets in their furious contests with the Scotch or the 
French, they Avere still '' Irish enemies ;" " aliens " imworthy 
human rights, villeins in whose veins no noble blood could flow, 
with the exception of five families. 



152 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

All tlie rest were not only ignoble, but not even oneii / notli- 
ing but 7nere IrisJi, whom any one niiglit- kill, even thougli serv- 
ing under the English crown, at a risk of being fined ^ve marks, 
to be paid to the treasury of the King of England, for having de- 
prived his majesty of a serviceable tool. 

This (to modern eyes) astounding social state demands a 
closer examination in order to see if, at least, it had the merit of 
finally procuring for the English the possession of the land they 
coveted. 

We find first that Henry II., John, and Henry III., would 
seem on several occasions to have extended the laws of England 
all over the island. But all English legists will tell us that those 
laws were only for the inhabitants of English blood. The mere 
Irish were always reputed aliens, or, rather, enemies to the crown, 
so that it was, " by actual fact, often adjudged no felony to kill a 
mere Irish in time of peace," as Sir John Davies expressly 
points out. 

Five families alone were exempted from the general category 
and acknowledged to be of noble blood — the O'l^Teills of Ulster, 
the O'Melachlins of Meath, the O'Connors of Connaught, the 
O'Briens of Munster, and the McMurroughs of Leinster. 

Those five families, numerous certainly, but forming only as 
many septs, were, or appeared to be, acknowledged as having a 
right to their lands, and as able to bring or defend actions at law. 
We say, ajypeared to be, because they found themselves on so 
many occasions ranked as mere Irish, that individuals of those 
septs, induced by sheer necessity, were often driven, in spite of 
an almost invincible repugnance, to apply for and accept special 
charters of naturalization from the English kings. Thus in the 
reign of Edward lY., 0'l!«[eill, on the occasion of his marriage 
with a daughter of the house of Kildare, was made an English 
citizen by special act of Parliament. 

In reality then, even the most illustrious members of the 
"five bloods" were scarcely considered as enjoying the full 
rights of the lowest English vassals, although their ancestors had 
been acknowledged kings by former Anglo-JN^orman monarchs in 
public documents : '■''Rex Henricus regi O^Neill^'^ etc. 

But if there was some shadow of doubt with regard to the polit- 
ical and social rights of those great families, such doubt did not 
exist for the remainder of the Irish race. They were absolutely 
without rights. Depriving them of their lands, pillaging their 
houses, devastating their farms, outraging their wives and daugh- 
ters, killing them, could not subject the guilty to any civil or 
criminal action at law. In fact, as we have shown, such acts 
were in accordance with the spirit, even with the letter of the 
law, so that the criminal, as we should consider him, had but ta 
plead that the man whom he had robbed or killed was a mere 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 153 

Irisliman, and tlie proceedings were immediately stopped, if this 
all-important fact were proved ; and in case of homicide the mm'- 
derer escaped by the payment of the iine of five marks to the 
treasury. 

To modern, even to English ears, all this may sound incredible. 
Many striking examples of the truth of it might be produced. 
They are to be found in all works which treat of the subject. 
Sir John Davies, that great Irish hater, evidently takes a genuine 
delight in depicting several such instances with all their aggra- 
vating details, scarcely expecting that every word he wrote would 
serve to brand forever with shame Anglo-Norman England. 

Under such legislation it was clear that life on the borders of 
the Pale was not only insecure, but that the soil would remain in 
the grasp of the strongest. Any Anglo-lSTorman only required the 
power in order to take possession of the land of his neighbor. 

But it is not in man's nature to submit to such galling thral- 
dom as this, without at least an attempt at retaliation. Least of 
all was it the nature of such a people to submit to such meas- 
ures — a nation, the most ancient in Europe, dating their 
ownership of the soil as far" back as man's memory could go, civ- 
ilized before Scandinavia became a nest of pirates, Christianized 
from the fifth century, and the spreader of literature, civilization, 
and the holy faith of Christ through England, Scotland, Germany, 
France, and ISTorthern Italy. 

If we have dwelt a little, and only a little, upon the intensity 
of the contest waged for four hundred years previous to the 
added atrocities introduced by the Keformation, we have done so 
advisedly, since it has become a fashion of late to throw a gloss 
over the past, to ignore it, to let the dead bury their dead — all 
which would be very well, could it be done, and could writers 
forget to stamp the Irish as unsociable, barbarous, and blood- 
thirsty, because with arms in their hands, and a fire ardent and 
sacred in their souls, they strove again and again to reconquer 
the territory which had been won from them by fraud, and be- 
cause they thought it fair to kill in open fight the men who 
avowed that they could kill them even in peace at a penalty of 
five marks. 

The contest, therefore, never ceased ; how could it ? But, in 
that endless conflict between the two races, the loss of territory 
leaned rather to the English side. If, with the help of their cas- 
tles, better discipline, and arms, the English at first gained on 
the natives and extended their possessions beyond the Pale, a 
reaction soon set in — ^the Irish had their day of revenge, and 
entered again into possession of the land of which they had been 
robbed. . In order to repair their losses, the Anglo-lSTormans had 
recourse to acts of Parliament, w^hich could bind not only the 
English of the Pale, but also those of other districts, who, enjoy- 



154 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

ing tlie privileges of Englislr law, were likewise bound bj its 
provisions. 

In order riglitly to understand tbe need and purposes of those 
enactments, we must return a moment to the days of the 
conquest. 

The case of Strongbow will illustrate many others. He 
married Eva, the daughter of McMurrough, and thus allied him- 
self to the best families of Leinster. On the death of his father- 
in-law, he received the whole kingdom as his inheritance. The 
greater part of his dominions, which he either would not or 
could not govern hirhself, he was compelled to distribute, in the 
usual style, among his followers. He distributed large estates as 
fiefs among those who had followed his fortunes, but he could 
not forget his Irish relatives, to whom he had become strongly 
attached. He secured, therefore, to many Irish fiimilies the terri- 
tory which was formerly theirs, and many of his English adherents, 
who, like himself, had married daughters of the soil, did the same 
in their more limited territories. This explains fully why Irish 
families remained in Leinster after the settlement of the Anglo- 
Kormans there, who established their Pale in it, as also why they 
continued to possess their lands in the midst of the English as 
they had formerly done in the midst of the Danes. 

The same thing took place in the kingdom of Cork, on the 
borders of Connaught, and around the seaports of Ulster, wher- 
ever the English had established themselves and erected castles 
and fortifications. 

But, over and above the Irish families, which, by their alliance 
by marriage and fosterage with the English, retained their lands 
and gradually increased them, many others, natives of the soil, 
reentered into possession of their former territory by the with- 
drawal of the Anglo-IlTorman holders of fiefs. Constant border 
wars, the necessary consequence of the English policy, could 
not but discourage in course of time many Englishmen, who, 
owning large possessions also in England and Wales, preferred 
to return to their own country rather than remain with their 
wives and children in a constant state of alarm, compelled to re- 
side within their castles, in dread of an attack at any moment 
from their Irish neighbors. 

Moreover, the vast majority of the Irish, who did not enjoy 
the benefit of these special privileges, who, deprived of their 
lands at the first invasion, had remained really outlaws^ and 
never entered into matrimonial or social alliance with their ene- 
mies, these men could not consent to starve and perish on their 
own soil, in the island which they loved and from which they 
could not — had they so chosen — escape by emigration. One re- 
source remained to them, and they grasped at it. They had their 
own mountain fastnesses and bogs to fly to, and from those 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 155 

recesses tliey could harass tlie invader, and incli by incli win back 
their lawful inheritance. 

They were often even encouraged in their attacks and depre- 
dations by the English of the Pale and out of it, who, unwilling 
longer to submit to the grinding feudal laws and exactions, could 
prevent the English judges, sheriffs, escheators, and other king's 
officers from executing the law against them, and thus they held 
out in their mountains, bogs, and rocky crags, in the midst of 
the invaders of their soil. 

A necessity arose then, on the part of the English rulers, of 
adopting measures calculated to prevent a further acquisition of 
territory by. the Irish, if not to extend the English settlements. 
They saw no other remedy than acts of Parliament, which they 
thought would at least prevent the subjects of English blood from 
assisting the Irish to reenter into possession, as was then being 
done on so extensive a scale. 

To effect this they revived the former statutes by which the 
Irish were placed without the protection of the law, were de- 
clared aliens and enemies, and were consequently denied the 
right of bringing actions in any of the English courts for tres- 
passes on their lands, or for violence done to their persons. 

They soon advanced a step beyond this. The Irish were for- 
bidden to purchase land, though the English were at liberty to 
occupy by force the landed property of the Irish, whenever they 
were strong enough to do so. An Irishman could acquire neither 
by gift nor purchase a rood of land which was the property of an 
Englishman. Thus, in every charter afterward granted to the few 
Irishmen who applied for them, it was expressly stated that they 
could purchase land for themselves and their heirs, which, with- 
out this special provision, they could not do; while for an 
Englishman to dispose of his landed property by will, gift, or sale 
to an Irishman, was equivalent to forfeiting his estate to the 
crown. The officers of the exchequer were directed by those acts 
of Parliament to hold inquisitions for the purpose of obtaining 
returns of such deeds of conveyance, in order to enrich the king's 
treasury by confiscations and forfeitures ; and the statute-rolls, 
preserved to this day in Dublin and London, show that such prose- 
cutions often took place, with the invariable result of forfeiture. 

The decision of the courts was always in favor of the crown, 
even in cases where the deed of conveyance or will was of no 
benefit to the person in whose favor it was drawn, but simply a 
trust for a third person of English race. And the great number 
of cases in which the inquisitions were set aside, as appears from 
the Parliament-rolls, for the finding having lyeen oncdicious and 
untrue — the parties complained of not being Irish but English — 
prove what we allege, namely, that an Irishman could not take 
land by conveyance from an Englishman. 



156 . CLAN"SmP AND FEUDALISM. 

Yet, as 'Mr. Prendergast justly says : " JSTotwitlistanding these 
prohibitions and laws of the Irish Parliament, the Irish grew and 
increased upon the English, and the Celtic customs overspread 
the feudal, until at length the administration of the feudal law 
was confined to little more than the few counties lying within 
the line of the LifFey and the Boyne." 

Let us now glance, in conclusion, at the result of more than 
four centuries of feudal oppression. 

Ireland rejected feudalism from the beginning, and this at 
a time when Europe had been compelled to adopt it, more or 
less, throughout. 

The distinction between lords and villeins, so marked in all 
other countries, remained at the end as it was at the beginning 
of the contest, a thing unknown in the island. Even in the Pale, 
the presence of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, O'Kavanaghs, and 
other septs, protested against and openly denied, from moor and 
glen and mountain fastness, that outrage on humanity, which 
bestows on the few every thing meant for all. The Brehon law 
was in full force all over the island, and if the Irish allowed the 
English judges to ride on their circuits within the four counties, 
it was on the full understanding that they would administer their 
justice only to English subjects, and levy their feudal dues, and 
pronounce their forfeitures and confiscations on such only as ac- 
knowledged the king's right on the premises. The laws enacted 
in the pretended Irish Parliament were only for such as called 
themselves English by birth; for even the English by blood, 
whose ancestors had long resided on the island, frequently re- 
fused to submit to the laws of Parliament, where they would not 
sit themselves, although possessing the right to do so. 

In vain was the threat of compulsion held up again and again 
before the eyes of the great lords of Desmond, Thomond, and 
Connaught. If they chose, they went ; if they chose not, they 
remained at home ; and obeyed or disobeyed at will the laws 
themselves, according as they were able or unable to set them at 
defiance. 

The castles which had been built all over the country by the 
first invaders, as a means of awing into subjection the surround- 
ing districts, were at the beginning of the fifteenth century no lon- 
ger feudal castles. They had either been destroyed and levelled to 
the ground by the Irish, or they were occupied by Irish chief- 
tains ; or, stranger still, if their holders were English lords, they 
were of those who had been won over to Irish manners. In 
their halls all the old customs of Erin were preserved. One saw 
therein groups of shanachies, and harpers, and Brehon lawyers, 
all conversing with their chieftain in the primitive language of 
the country. Hence were they called degenerate by the " for- 
eigners" livino; in Dublin Castle. The mansions of the Des- 



CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 157 

monds, of the Burgos, of tlie Ormonds, were the headquarters 
of their respective clans, not the inaccessible fortresses of steel- 
clad warriors, who alone were possessed of social and civil rights. 
If the master of the household held sometimes the title of earl, or 
count, or baron, he was careful never to use it before his retain- 
ers, Avhom he called his clansmen. When he went to Dublin or 
to London, he donned it with the dress of a knight or a great 
feudal lord ; on his return holne he threw it aside, resumed the 
cloak of the country, and was Irish again. 

The subject of feudal titles in Ireland has not been sufficiently 
studied and elucidated. A clearer light thrown on this question 
would, we have no doubt, show more conclusively than long dis- 
cussions with what stubbornness the Irish refused to submit to the 
reality of feudalism, even when consenting to admit its presence 
and phraseology. It is a fact not sufficiently dwelt upon, that 
the few Irishmen, who subsequently consented to receive English 
titles from the king, were regarded by their countrymen with 
greater abhorrence than the English themselves, though in most 
cases the titles were empty ones, which affected nothing in their 
mode of life. Yet were they looked upon as apostates to their 
nation, and after the Eeformation such a step was often the first 
to apostasy of religion, the deepest stain on an Irish name. 

Feudalism had also its mode of taxation which failed with the 
rest in Ireland. 

In feudal countries the lord imposed no tax on his villeins ; 
these were mere chattels, ascripti glehce, who tilled the land for 
their masters, and, as good serfs, could own nothing but the few 
utensils of their miserable hovels. They were just allowed what 
sufficed to support their own life and that of their families, and 
consequently they could bear no additional tax. But, in the com- 
plicated state of society brought about by feudalism, the inferior 
lord was taxed by his superior, a system that ran down the whole 
feudal scale, and it would take a lawyer to explain aids, tal- 
lages, wardships, fines for alienation, seizins, rents, escheats, 
and finally forfeiture, the heaviest and most common of all in 
England. 

The Irish fought valiantly against the imposition of those 
burdens, and aided the English settled among them to repudi- 
ate them all in course of time. 

It must be said, however, that they did not succeed in pre- 
venting their own taxes, according to the Book of Rights, from 
becoming heavier under the ingenuity of the English who were 
established among them and admitted to all the rights of clan- 
ship. We see by documents which have been better studied of 
late, that the great Anglo-Irish lords had succeeded in increasing 
the burdens in the shape of exactions, which were never com- 
plained of by the Irish. 



158 CLANSHIP AND FEUDALISM. 

On this subject Dr. O'Donoyan, id the preface to his edition 
of the " Book of Eights," is worthy of perusal. 

But it is chiefly in the very essence of feudalism that the fail- 
ure of the Anglo-l^ormans was most signal. Feudalism really 
consisted in the status given, to the land, the possession of which 
determined and gave all rights, so that, according to it, man was 
made for the land rather than the land for man. He was placed 
on the land with the beasts of the field as far as tillage and pro- 
duction went, until the system should round to perfection and 
finally bring to the surface the new principles of social economy, 
according to which the greater the number of cattle and the fewer 
the number of men, the more prosperous and happy might the- 
country be said to be. 

The Irish staked their existence against those principles, and 
won. So complete was their victory that the feudal barons who 
first came among them finally yielded to clanship, became the 
chiefs of new clans, and opened their territories to all who chose 
to send their horses and kine to graze in the chief's domains. 
In vain did Irish Parliaments issue writs of forfeiture against the 
English lords who acted thus, for between the law and its execu- 
tion the clans intervened, and no sherifip or judge could step 
beyond the bounds of the four counties of the Pale to enforce 
those acts. 

It is told of one of the Irish chieftains that on receiving inti- 
mation from a high English official of a sheriff 's visit on the next 
breach of some new law or ordinance, for the safety of which 
sherifi:' he would be held responsible, he replied : " You will do 
well to let me know at the same time what will be the amount 
of his eric, in case of his murder, that I may beforehand assess it 
on the clan." 

This story may tend better than any thing else to give a clear 
reason for the failure of feudalism in Ireland. 



CHAPTEE YII. 

IRELAND SEPARATED FEOM EUEOPE. A TEIPLE EPISODE. 

"While the struggle described in tlie last chapter was raging, 
Ireland could have little or no intercourse with the rest of 
Europe. Heaven alone was witness of the heroism displayed by 
the free clans wrestling with feudal England. It was only dur- 
ing the internecine wars of the Eoses that Erin enjoyed a res- 
pite, and then we read that Margaret of Oifaly summoned to 
peaceful contest the bards of the island, while the shrines of 
Kome and Compostella were thronged with pilgrims, chiefs, and 
princes, " paying their vows of faith from the W estern Isle." 

In the mean time Christendom had been witness of mighty 
events in which Ireland could take no part. The enthusiastic 
impulse which gave birth to the Crusades, the uprising of th.e 
communes against feudal thraldom, the mental activity of numer- 
ous universities, starting each day into life, form, among other 
things, the three great progressive waves in the moving ocean of 
the time : 

I. When Europe in phalanx of steel hurled itself upon Asia and 
saved Christendom from the yoke of Islam, when the Jaj)hetic 
race by a mighty effort asserted its right not merely to exist- 
ence, but to a preponderance in the affairs of the world, Ireland, 
the nation Christian of Christians, had not a name among men. 
It was supposed to be a dependency of England, and the envoys 
sent abroad to all parts by the Holy See to preach the Crusades, 
never touched her shores to deliver the cross to her warriors. 
The most chivalous nation of Christendom was altogether forgot- 
ten, and in its ecclesiastical annals no mention is made of the 
Crusades even by name. 

The holy wars, moreover, were set on foot and carried on by 
the feudal chivalry of Europe, and in fact, wherever the Europeans 
established their power in the East, that power took the shape of 
feudalism. But Ireland had rejected this system, and consequent- 
ly her sons could find no place in the ranks of the knights of Elan- 
ders, Kormandy, Aquitaine, and England. Their chivalry was of 



160 lEELAKD m THE MIDDLE AGES. 

anotlier stamp, aud was employed at tlie time in wresting their 
social state and territory from the grasp of ruthless invaders. 

Hence, not even St. Bernard, the ardent friend of St. Malachi, 
remembered them, when journeying through Europe to distribute 
the Cross to whole armies of warriors. Not only did he fail to 
cross the Channel for the purpose of rousing the Christian enthu- 
siasm of a people ever ready to hearken to a call to arms when a 
noble cause was at stake ; he did not think even of writing a sin- 
gle letter to any bishop or abbot in Ireland, asking them to 
preach the holy war in his name. 

Thus Ireland failed to participate in any of the benefits which 
accrued to the European nations from the Crusades, as she failed 
likewise to participate in results less beneficial which also accrued 
from that powerful agitation. 

Among such results is one which has not met with all the 
attention it deserves. Historians speak at length of the many 
and wide-spread heresies which infected Europe during the mid- 
dle ages ; but their Eastern origin has not been thoroughly inves- 
tigated, and we have no doubt that, if it had been, many of them 
would be found to have come with a returning wave of the Crusades. 

All these errors bear at the outset a very Oriental appearance. 
Paulicians, Petrobrusians, Albigensians, and kindred sects, all 
started from the principle of dualism, and even at the time 
were openly accused of Manicheistic ideas. They all involved 
more or less immoral principles, and rejected, or at least strove 
to weaken, the commonly-received ideas upon which society, 
civil and religious, is founded. Had they succeeded in spread- 
ing their errors through Europe, it is possible that the invasion 
would have been more fatal in its consequences than that of 
Islamism itself. And, even in their failure, they left among 
European societies the germ of secret associations which have 
existed from that time down, and which in our days have burst 
forth undisguised to terrify nations, and cause them to dread 
the coming of the last days. 

To an attentive observer it is clear that the heresies of the 
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries resemble more 
the errors of our days than the Protestantism which intervened. 
Luther's first principles, if carried to their legitimate conclusion, 
would have inaugurated the socialism and communism of modern 
times ; but he shrank from the consequences of his own doctrines, 
and the necessity of his standing well with the German princes 
caused him, during the "War of the Peasants, almost to retract his 
first utterances and take his stand midway between Catholic 
principles and the thorough nihilism of later times. It is known 
that in the after-part of his life he endeavored to repair the ruins 
of every dogma, social and religious, which he at first had tried 
to subvert and destroy. 



IRELAND m THE MIDDLE AGES. 161 

The Maniclieism of tlie middle ages was certainly not of so 
scientific and elaborate a nature as modern socialism ; bnt it 
would have been productive of like evil results to society had it 
not been crushed down by the united power of the Church and 
the state. If it had been successful, it is impossible to imagine 
what would have become of Europe. 

Of its Eastern origin historians say little. We know, how- 
ever, that, after a residence in the East, the most pious Christians 
grew lukewarm and less firm in their opposition to the dangerous 
errors then prevalent in Asia. Tournefort remarked this in his 
own time, during the reign of Louis XIY. 

It is known also that the posterity of the first crusaders in 
Palestine formed a hybrid race, which, weakened by the influence 
of the luxurious habits of Eastern countries, became corrupt, and 
under the name of Pulani practised a feeble Christianity, nn^fit 
to cope with the vigorous fanaticism of the Mussulman. Many 
Europeans came back from those wars wavering in faith, and no 
one knows how many with faith entirely lost. 

It is not, therefore, too much to suppose that the Oriental 
errors which suddenly burst forth at this time in Western Europe 
followed in the wake of the returning pilgrims, and it is highly 
probable, if not absolutely certain, that, had there been no Cru- 
sades, Manicheism and the secret societies born of it would never 
have been known in Italy and France. Hence, one of the first 
and greatest champions of the Church in controversy with the 
Albigenses — Peter the Yenerable, Abbot of Cluny — at the very 
beginning of the heresy, found no better means of opposing the 
new errors than attacldng every thing coming froni the East. 
Thus, he wrote his long treatises against the Talmud and the 
Koran, so much had the Crusades already contributed to intro- 
ducing into Western Europe the seeds of Asiatic errors. All 
historians agree in giving an Eastern origin to the Paulicians, 
Bulgarians, Albigenses, and others of those times. 

Manicheism indeed had infested Europe long before. Some 
Poman emperors had published severe edicts against it. In the 
fifth century the heresy still flourished in Italy and Africa, St. 
Augustine himself being an adept for several years, and by his 
writings he has made us acquainted with its strongest supporters 
in his day. He was followed, in his attacks on it, by a great num- 
ber of Fathers, both Greek and Latin. 

But after the barbarian invasions we hear no more of the 
Manichees for npward of five hundred years. The West had 
entirely forgotten them. Arianism and Manicheism had ap- 
parently perished together. The tenth century is called a period 
of darkness and ignorance ; it at least possessed the advan- 
tage of being free from heresy ; the dogmas of the Church 
were unhesitatingly and universally accepted. Western Europe, 
11 



162 lEELAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 

thougli cut up by the new-born ifendalism into a thousand frag- 
ments, was at least one in faith, until that great and powerful 
union, having, in an outburst of enthusiasm, produced the Cru- 
sades, we suddenly find Eastern theories and immoralities invad- 
ing the countries most faithful to the Church. 

Raymond YI., Count of Toulouse, the great champion of 
the Albigenses, was the n.ear descendant of that great Ray- 
mond, one of the chiefs of the first Crusade, who might have 
aspired to the throne of Jerusalem, had not Godfrey de Bouil- 
lon won the suffrages of the soldiers of the Cross by his ardent 
and pure piety. 

Raymond YI. dwelt in Languedoc, in all the luxurious splen- 
dor of an Eastern emir ; and- he doubtless found the doctrines 
of dualistic Manicheism more congenial to his taste for pleasure 
than the stern tenets of the Christian religion. Ambition, it is 
true, was one of the chief motives which prompted him to place 
himself at the head of the heretics ; he hoped to enrich himself 
through them by the spoils of the Church ; and thus the same 
power which later on moved the German princes to embrace 
Lutheranism was already acting on the aspiring Count of Toulouse 
at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Thus we find him 
at the head of his troops, plundering churches, ravaging monas- 
teries, outraging and profaning holy things, for the purpose of 
filling his cofi:ers. 

Yet it is also certain that he, the chief of the sectarians, 
and a great number of the nobility of Southern France, were led 
to embrace the Albigensian error by the degrading habits which 
they had previously contracted. 

We do not purpose entering into a lengthened discussion on 
the subject ; we merely wish to contrast, with the wide spread of 
heresy in Western Europe, the great fact of a total absence of it 
in Ireland ; or rather, we should say, and by so saying we con- 
firm our reflection, that errors of a similar nature did invade the 
Pale in Erin at this time, without touching in any wise the chil- 
dren of the soil. 

For, it is a remarkable fact that, at the beginning of the four- 
teenth century, the name of heresy is mentioned for the first and 
last time in Catholic Ireland ; the new doctrines bearing a close 
resemblance to some of the errors of the Albigenses, and their 
chief propagators being all lords of the Pale. 

In November of 1235, Pope Benedict XII. wrote a letter 
on this subject to Edward III. of England, which may be read in 
F. Brenan's Ecclesiastical History. 

It is clear from many things related by Ware in his "Antiqui- 
ties" that the Yicar of Christ, unable to follow freely his inclina- 
tions with respect to the filling of the sees of Erin, and obliged 
to appoint to bishoprics, at least in many parts of the island, only 



IRELAIvTC Ii;r THE MIDDLE AGES. 163 

men of English birtli, selected for that purpose members of the 
various religious orders then existing. Instead of granting epis- 
copal jurisdiction to the feudal nominees of the court, when 
unworthy. Kome appointed a Franciscan, or a Dominican, a 
member of some religious community, who was born in England, 
but at least more independent of the court, of greater sympathy 
with the people, less swayed by worldly and selfish motives, and 
consequently readier to obey the mandates of Rome, which were 
always on the side of justice and morality. Thus we find that in 
the whole history of Ireland, as a general rule, the bishops chosen 
from religious orders were acceptable to the people, and true to 
their duty. 

Such a man certainly was Richard Ledred, a Minorite, born 
in London, whom the Pope made Bishop of Ossory. But on that 
very account he incurred the hatred of many English ofiicials, 
and even of worldly prelates, among' whom Alexander Bicknor, 
Archbishop of Dublin, was the most conspicuous. Bicknor was 
not only archbishop, but had been appointed Lord Justice of 
Ireland by the king, and later on Lord Deputy ; later still he 
was dispatched by the English Parliament as ambassador to 
France. 

"It had been well," says F. Brenan, "for the archbishop 
himself, and for those immediately under his jurisdiction, had he 
abstained from mixing himself up with the state afifairs of those 
times. Ambition formed no inferior trait in the character of 
Alexander, even long before he had been exalted to a high 
dignity in the Church. He advanced rapidly into power, step- 
ping from one oflice into another, until at length he found him- 
self in the midst of the labyrinth, without being able to make 
his way, unless by means of guides as inexperienced as they 
were treacherous. It was by causes such as these that he brought 
himself into serious difficulties, not only with the Archbishop of 
Armagh, on account of the primacy, but also with his own suf- 
fragans, and particularly with the Bishop of Ossory." 

Under these circumstances it was that the prelate last men- 
tioned, on visiting his diocese, found unmistakable signs of the 
spread of heresy among his flock. His diocese at that time 
formed a part of the English Pale, and Kilkenny, where he had 
his cathedral, was often the seat of Parliament. 

Among those most active for the propagation of the new 
doctrines were found, the Seneschal of Kilkenny, the Treasurer 
of Ireland, and the Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas — all 
English of the Pale. The zealous bishop, fearless of the conse- 
quences, openly denounced them, and publicly excommunicated 
the Treasurer. At once a terrible storm was raised among their 
English abettors, and, in order to screen the guilty parties, they 
recriminated against the prelate, and accused him of being a 



164 IRELAND IK THE MIDDLE AGES. 

sliarei* in the crime of Thomas Eitzgilbert, who had burned the 
castle of Moy Cahir, and killed its owner, Hugh Le Poer. The 
temporalities of Ledred having been already sequestrated for his 
boldness in denouncing heretics, he was compelled finally to 
leave his diocese and fly to Avignon, where he remained in exile 
for nine years. 

The Archbishop of Dublin had been one of his bitterest ene- 
mies, and, although not actually accused of heresy himself, he was 
certainly the abettor of heretics, and had done all in his power 
to have Ledred arrested for his supposed crimes. 

"Ware, in his lives of Bicknor and Ledred, is evidently a par- 
tisan of the first and an enemy of the second. He pretends that 
Ledred tacitly acknowledged his guilt in the affair of Le Poer, 
since he sued for pardon to the king, as though readers of Eng- 
lish history did not constantly meet with instances of innocent 
men compelled to sue for pardon of crimes which they had never 
committed. 

We have fortunately better judges of the characters of both 
prelates in the two popes, Benedict XII. and Clement YI. : the 
first believing in the existence of the heresy denounced by 
Ledi*ed ; the second exempting the Bishop of Ossory from the 
superior jurisdiction of Bicknor, on account of the unjust 
animosity displayed toward him by this worldly prelate. 

The absence of all historical documents in reference to the 
case leaves us at a loss to know the effect produced on Edward III. 
by the letter of the Pontiff. Ifc is highly probable that the king 
preferred to believe Bicknor rather than the Pope, and disre- 
garded the advice of the latter. 

Li such an event, how was the heresy put down ? Simply by 
the good sense and spirit of faith of the people, or rather by the 
deep Christian feeling of the native Irish, who were always 
opposed to innovation, and who remained firm in the traditional 
belief inherent in the nation by the grace of God. Schism and 
heresy seem impossible among the children of Erin. If at any 
time certain novelties have appeared among them, they have 
speedily vanished like empty vapor. They heard that, in other 
parts of the Church, in the East chiefly, heresiarchs had arisen 
and led away into error large numbers of people forming some- 
times formidable sects, which threatened the very existence of 
the religion of Christ ; but the face of a heretic they had never 
beheld. Soon, indeed, they were to be at the mercy of a whole 
swarm of them, to see a pretended church leagued with the state 
to bring about their perversion ; but as yet they had had no ex- 
perience of the kind. 

Only a few heretics were pointed out to them by the finger 
of one of their bishops, and his denunciations were confirmed by 
the judgment of the Holy See. Hence, according to F. Brenan, 



lEELAl^D m THE MIDDLE AGES. 165 

" the sensation which pervaded all classes became vehement and 
frightful. The bishop and his clergy came forward, and by solid 
argmnent, by the strength and power of truth, opposed and dis- 
comfited the enemies of religion." 

The feeling here expressed is a natural one for a true Chris- 
tian at the very mention of heresy. Yet how few nations have 
experienced a sensation " vehement and frightful " at the ap- 
pearance of positive error among them ! But, at all periods of 
their history, such has been the feeling of the Irish people. 

Fortunately for them, the number of sectarians was so small 
as to become insignificant ; the English of the Pale were always 
few in comparison with the natives, and heresy had been adopted 
by only a small body. 

Error, therefore, could not cause in the island the social and 
political convulsions which it had produced in France about the 
same time. There was no need of a second Albigensian war to 
put it dowm. There was no need even of the Inquisition, as an 
ecclesiastical tribunal. The sentence of the bishop, the decree of 
excommunication pronounced from the foot of the altar, was all 
that was required. 

When we compare this single fact of Irish ecclesiastical his- 
tory with what was then transpiring in Europe — the most 
insidious errors spreading throughout ; the faith of many becom- 
ing unsettled, a general preparation for the social deluge which 
was impending and so soon to fall — we cannot but conclude that 
Ireland, in the midst of her misfortunes, was happy in being sep- 
arated from the rest of the world. The breath of novelty could 
breathe no contagion on her shores. Happy even was she in not 
seeing her sons enlist in the army of the Cross, if the result of 
their victories was, to bring back from the Holy Land the Eastern 
corruption and the many heresies nestling there and settled, even 
around the sepulchre of our Lord, during so many ages of separa- 
tion from the West and open communication with all the wild 
vagaries of Arabian, Persian, and Indian philosophies. 

Even in the midst of such a trial we believe that Ireland 
would have held steadfast to her faith, as she did later on when 
heresy came to her with compulsion or death ; and this firmness 
of purpose, which the Irish have always manifested w^hen the 
question was a change of religion, is worthy our consideration. 
For the facility w^ith which some nations have, in the course of 
ages, yielded to the spirit of novelty, and the sturdy resistance 
opposed to it by others, is a subject that would repay investiga- 
tion, but which we can only slightly touch upon. 

In ancient times the Greek mind, accustomed from the begin- 
ning to subtlety of argument, and easily carried away by a ration- 
alism which was innate, ofters a striking contrast to the steady 
traditional spirit of the Latin races in general. Except Pelagian- 



166 lEELAND m THE MIDDLE AGES. 

ism and its cognate errors, all the great heresies which afflicted 
the Chnrch during the first ten centuries, originated in the East ; 
and the various sects catalogued by several of the Greek Fathers, 
as early as the second and third centuries, astonish the modern 
reader by the slender web on which their often ridiculous sys- 
tems are spun, of texture strong enough, however, at the time 
to form the groundwork for making a disastrous impression on a 
large number of adherents. The infinity almost of philosophical 
systems in pagan Greece had prepared the way for the subse- 
quent vagaries of heresy, and we must look to our own times, so 
prolific of absurd theories, in order to find a parallel to the incred- 
ible variety of dogmatic assertions among the Greek heresiarchs 
of early times. 

But, at the outbreak of Protestantism, in the sixteenth century, 
the world witnessed a still more striking example of diversity in 
the various branches of the Japhetic family — the nations belonging 
to the Teutonic and Scandinavian stocks chiefly embracing the 
error at once with a wonderful spontaneity. The various rem- 
nants of the Celtic race and the totality of the Latin nations re- 
mained, on the whole, obedient to the guiding voice of the Church 
of Christ. It is customary with modern writers, when imbued 
with what are called liberal ideas, to ascribe this diff'erence to the 
steady, systematic mind of northern nations, and to their innate 
love of liberty, which could not brook the yoke of spiritual des- 
potism imposed by the Church of Kome. But all this is mere 
supposition, inadequate to accounting for the fact. The Teutonic 
and Scandinavian mind is certainly more systematic and «/p- 
parently more steady than the Celtic ; but it is far less so than 
the Latin. ]N"o nation in the whole history of mankind has ever 
displayed more steadiness and system than the Romans, and the 
Latin family has inherited those characteristics from Home. The 
Spanish race has no equal in steadiness (in the sense here in- 
tended of steadfastness), and the French certainly none in system, 
which it often carried to the verge of absurdity. 

As for love of liberty, as distinct from love of license, it had 
absolutely nothing to do with the great revolution which has 
been called the Reformation. ISTo nation can relish despotism, 
and the whole history of L-eland is a living example that her 
sons are steadily opposed to it to the death. And it is now too 
late to pretend that the cause of true liberty has been served by 
the spread of Protestantism over a large portion of Europe. 
Balmez and others have proved the falsehood of such pretensions. 
If any modern writers, such as Mr. Bancroft, for instance, men 
otherwise of sound mind and great ability, continue to assert 
this, the assertion must proceed from prejudice deeply ingrained, 
which reflection has not yet succeeded in eradicating, and their 
opinions on the subject are necessarily confined to bold asser- 



lEELAKD m THE MIDDLE AGES. 167 

tions, of a eliaracter wliicli in others they themselves would stig- 
matize as empty and unfounded. 

The reason of the difference lies deeper in the constitution of 
the human mind, in the Celtic and Latin races on the one side, 
in the Teutonic and Scandinavian families on the other. Any 
one who has studied the Irish character in our days — a character 
which was the same in former ages — will easily see something of 
that great and happy cause. 

The difference lies first in the good sense which enables them 
to perceive instinctively that the eternal should he preferred to 
the temporal. If all men kept that distinct perception ever 
present to. their minds, they would not only accept at all times 
the truths of faith, since faith, according to St. Paul, is " the sub- 
stance of the things hoped for," but they would remain ever 
faithful to the moral code given us by God. The Celt indeed 
will at times lose sight of the eternal in the presence of a tem- 
poral temptation ; but he is never blind to the knowledge that 
faith is the groundwork of salvation, and that hope remains as 
long as that is not surrendered. Therefore he will never surren- 
der it. The need of reviving his faith is rarely called for, when, 
after a life of sin, the shadow of death reminds him of the duty he 
owes his own soul. The great truth that, after all, the Eternal 
is every thing, remains always deeply impressed on his mind ; and 
half his labor is spared to the minister of God, when bringing 
such a man back to a life of virtue. There is scarcely any need 
of asking an Irishman, " Do you believe ? " For, every word that 
passes his lips, every look and gesture, every expression of feel- 
ing, is in fact an act of faith. How easy after this is the work of 
regeneration ! 

O happy race, to whom this life is in truth a shadow that 
passeth away! to whom the unseen is ever present, or comes 
back so vividly and so readily ! 

This supposes, as we have said, a sound, good sense, which is 
characteristic of the race. We may say that this nation possesses 
the wisdom of Sir Thomas More, who esteemed it folly to lose 
eternity for a life of twenty years of ease and honors. Is not 
this, at bottom, the thought which has sustained the nation in 
that dread martyrdom of three centuries, whose terrible story we 
have still to tell ? Have they not, as a nation, one after another, 
generation upon generation, lived and passed their lives in con- 
tempt, in want, in frightful misery, to die in torments or hidden 
sufferings, without a gleam of hope from this world for their 
race, their families, their children, their very name, because they 
would not surrender their religion, that is to say, truth, which 
alone could secure the eternal welfare of their souls ? 

Speak to us, after this, of a steady and systematic mind ! 
Prate to us of the love of liberty, of self-dignity ! "Where are 



168 lEELAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 

sucli things to be found in tlieir reality, on tlieir trial, if not in 
the scenes and the nation we have just pictured ? 

A second reason, no less eifective, perhaps, than the first, and 
certainly as remarkable, is the very composition of the Celtic 
mind, which naturally tends to firm belief, because it is given 
exclusively to traditions, past events, narratives of poets, histo- 
rians, and genealogists. Had the Irish at any time turned them- 
selves to criticise, to doubt, to argue, their very existence, as a 
people, would have ceased. They must go on 'believing, or all 
reality vanishes from their minds, accustomed for so many ages 
to take in that solid knowledge founded, it is true, on hearsay ; 
but how else can truth reach us save by hearsay ? Hence, their 
simple and artless acquiescence in any thing they hear from 
trustworthy lips — acquiescence ever refused to a known enemy, 
never to a well-tried friend, even when the facts ascertained are 
strange, mysterious, unaccounted for, and incredible to minds 
difierently constituted. 

Thus, when we read their ^'■Ada Sanctorum, ^^ we at once find 
ourselves in a world so different from our every-day world — 
a region of wonders, mysteries, of heavenly and supernatural 
deeds, unequalled in any story of marvellous travel or fable 
of imaginative romance. Yet, who will say that the writers 
doubted a single phrase of what they wrote ? Is it not clear, 
from the very words they use, that they would have held it sac- 
rilege to utter a falsehood, when speaking of the blessed saints ? 
And, can the lives of the saints be like those of common mortals ? 
What is there strange in considering that the earth was mys- 
terious and heavenly, when heavenly beings walked upon it ? 
Head the Litany and Festology of ^ngus, and doubt if the holy 
man did not believe all therein contained. Say, if it can be pos- 
sible, that it is not all true, though aj)parently incredible. Who 
can doubt what is asserted with such vehemence of belief? How 
can that fail to be true which holy men and women have them- 
selves believed, and given to the world to be believed ? 

This thoroughly explains the simplicity of faith which still 
distinguishes the Irish people. It explains why no heretic could 
be found among tliem, and their intense horror of heresy as soon 
as known. IsTor is it their mind alone which bears the impress 
of faith : their very exterior is a witness to it. Go into any 
large city where dwell a number of Irish inhabitants ; walk 
through the public streets, where they walk among the children 
of other races, and you will easily distinguish them, not only by 
the modesty of their women and the simple bearing of their men, 
but by the look of confidence and contentedness stamped on their 
features. Whoever has a settled faith, is no longer an inquirer, 
no longer troubled with the anxiety and restlessness of a man 
plunged in doubt and imcertainty ; all the lineaments of the 



lEELAND m THE MIDDLE AGES. 169 

face, all the gestures and attitudes of the body, speak of quietude 
and repose. 

"We might render this discussion more effective by the study 
of the contrary phenomena, by showing how easily races, differ- 
ently gifted, endowed with the spirit of criticism and argument, 
sever from the faith and follow the lead of deceptive teachers. 
Our object here was to describe the Irish, and not to enter into 
a study of the physiology of other minds ; but a word on Ger- 
manic and Scandinavian tribes and peoples may not be amiss. 

There is no doubt that these races place their " good sense " 
in a very different line from the Irish ; that they are, also, much 
more given to criticism, what they call "grumbling," and ab- 
sence of repose. 

"With regard to the first point — their " good sense " — it is 
easy to remark their tendency to prefer the temporal to the eter- 
nal. For their "good sense " consists in enjoying the things of 
this life without troubling themselves over-much about another. 
And, in this observation, there is nothing which can possibly 
offend them, for such is their open profession and estimate of 
true wisdom. Hence result their love of comfort, their thrift, 
their- shrewdness in all material and worldly affairs ; hence, 
their constant boasting about their civilization, understanding, 
thereby, what is pleasing to the senses ; hence, also, their success 
in a life wherein they set their whole happiness. How could 
they be expected to remain steadfast to a faith which declares 
war to pleasure, and speaks only of contempt for this world ? It 
is not matter of surprise, then, that their great argument, to prove 
that theirs is the better and the right religion, is to compare 
their physical well-being with the inferiority in that regard of 
Catholic nations. 

With regard to the spirit of criticism and argumentation, 
nothing is so opposed to the spirit of faith ; and it is as clear as 
day that the northern races possess this in an eminent degree. 
What question, rehgious or philosophical, can rest intact when 
brought under the microscopic vision of a German philosopher 
or an English rationalist ? A few years more of criticism, as now 
understood and practised by them, would leave absolutely noth- 
ing which the mind of man could respect and believe. 

An attentive observer will surely conclude, after a serious ex- 
amination of the subject, that it is from petty causes of this 
character that these races have so easily surrendered their faith, 
rather than from their systematic minds and love of liberty. 

II. The rising of the communes, one of the greatest features 
of mediseval Europe, did not extend to Ireland, separated as it 
then was from the Continent. But, by reason of this very sepa- 
ration, the island remained forever free from the future political 
commotions of what is known as " the third estate." A few re- 



170 IRELAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 

marks on this subject are requisite, because of the objection 
brought against the Irish, that they have never known muni- 
cipal government, and also on account of the false assertions of 
some philosophical historians, who allege that the Danes and 
Anglo-Kormans, in turn, wrought a great good to Ireland by 
bringing with them the boon of citizen rights. 

What were the causes of the rising of the communes in the 
eleventh and following centuries ? The universality of the fact 
argues identity of motives, since, without common understanding 
among various nations, the risings showed themselves at about 
the same time in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and England. 

In ancient cities, which existed prior to the Germanic inva- 
sions, the population, after the scourge had passed, was composed 
principally of three elements : 1. Free men of the conquering 
races, who were poor, and had embraced some mechanical pur- 
suit ; 2. The remnants of the Koman population, who followed 
some trade ; 3. Freedmen from the rural districts, who, unable 
to gain a livelihood in the country, had come to reside in the 
cities, where they could more easily subsist. 

Thus, besides the feudal lords and the class of villeins, there 
was formed everywhere a third class, that of arts and trades. 

The juridical power being restricted to the lords, whose 
rights extended only to the land and the men attached to it, 
the class of artisans found themselves destitute of legal rights, 
without a recognition or place even in the jurisprudence, as then 
existing, consequently in a practically anarchical state. Hence, 
they formed among themselves their own associations, elected 
their own magistrates, enacted their own by-laws. 

In the cities we have mentioned, the bishop alone held social 
relations with the lords, whether the feudal chieftain of the 
vicinity, or the Count of the city. Thus, the bishop often acted 
as the mediator between the citizens and the privileged class 
which surrounded them. The great object of the citizens was to 
obtain a charter of rights from the suzerain, who alone could act 
with justice and impartiality toward those disfranchised burghers. 
To this was owed the immense number of charters granted at 
that time, many of which, lately published, tend better than any 
thing else to give us an insight into the origin of municipal life 
in mediaeval Europe. 

ISTew cities, either founded by the invaders or springing up 
of themselves around feudal castles and monasteries, soon experi- 
enced the necessity of similar fovors, which, as soon as obtained, 
invested them with a social status unenjoyed before. 

The number of freemen, reduced to poverty, or of recent 
freedmen — freed by the emancipation everywhere set on foot 
and encouraged by the Church — extended the spread of com- 
munes even to the rural districts. Thus, many villages or small 



lEELAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 171 

towns grew into corporations, and a social state arose, hitherto 
totally unknown in Europe. 

The question has been much discussed, whether those new 
municipal corporations owed their origin to the municipal sys- 
tem of the Romans, or were altogether disconnected with it. 
The opinion commonly now accepted is, that the two systems 
were utterly distinct. In some few instances, a particular Ko- 
man municipal city may l;ave passed into a mediseval corporate 
town under a new charter and with extended rights ; but this 
was certainly the exception. In the great majority of cases, the 
newly-chartered cities had never before enjoyed municipal rights. 

These few words suffice to show that the communes, wher- 
ever they arose, presupposed the existence of feudalism, and the 
slavery once so widely extended, passing gradually into serfdom. 

But neither feudalism nor slavery, in the old pagan sense of 
the word, nor even serfdom, properly so called, as the doom of 
the ascripti glebcB^ ever existed in Ireland. There was, there- 
fore, no need among the Irish for the rising of communes. 

Nevertheless, we do find communes existing in Ireland and 
charters granted to Irish cities by English kings. But they were 
merely English institutions for the special benefit of the English 
of the Pale, which were always refused to " the Irish enemy," and 
which the " Irish enemy," with the exception of a few individual 
cases, never demanded. Consequently the fact stands almost 
universally true that the rising of the communes never extended 
to Ireland, and that, if the Ii'ish never enjoyed the benefit of 
them, as little did they share in the evil consequences resulting 
from them. 

All those evil consequences had their root in a feeling of bit- 
ter hostility between the higher or noble classes, and not only the 
villeins, whom they ground between them, but also the middle 
classes, who were dwelling in the cities, emancipating themselves 
by slow degrees, and forming in course of time the "third 
estate." 

The workings of that hostility form a great part of the history 
of Europe from the twelfth century down to the present day, 
and many social convulsions, recorded in the annals of the six 
ages preceding our own, may be traced to it. The frightful 
Erench Revolution was certainly a result of it, although it must 
be granted that several secondary causes contributed to render 
the catastrophe more destructive, the chief among which was the 
spread of infidel doctrines among the higher and middle classes. 

But our days witness a still more awful spectacle, the persist- 
ent array of the poor against the rich in all countries once Chris- 
tian, and this may be traced directly to their mediseval origin now 
under our consideration ; and, the evils preparing for mankind 
therefrom, future history alone will be able to tell. 



1Y2 IRELAND m THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Ill Ireland, this lias never been the danger. In the earlier 
constitution of the nation, there could be no rivalry, no hostility 
of class with class, as there never existed any social distinction 
between them ; and if, in our days, the poor there as elsewhere 
seem arrayed against the rich, it is not as class against class, 
but as the spoiled against the spoiler, the victim against the rob- 
ber, against the holders of the soil by right of confiscation — a soil 
upon which the old owners still live, with all the traditions of 
their history, which have never been completely effaced, and 
which in our days are springing into new life under the studies 
of j)atriotic antiquarians. This fact cannot be denied. 

The case of Ireland is so different in this respect from that of 
other nations, that in no other country have the people been re- 
duced to such a degrading state of pauperism, yet in no other 
country is the same submission to the existing order of society 
found among the lower classes. 'No communism, no socialism 
has ever been preached there, and, were it preached, it would 
only be to deaf ears. Until the last two or three centuries, no 
seed of animosity between high and low, rich and poor, had been 
sowed in Ireland. The reason of this we have seen in a previous 
chapter. And if, since the wholesale confiscations of the seven- 
teenth century, the country has been divided into two hostile 
camps, the fault has never laid with the poor, the despoiled ; they 
have always been the victims, and never uttered open threats of 
destruction against their oppressors. If in the future men look 
to great calamities, Ireland is the only quarter from which noth- 
ing of the kind is to be feared, and the impending revolution 
by which she may profit will look to her for no assistance in the 
subversion of society. 

We now leave the reader to appreciate to its full extent the 
real value of the opinion of modern writers who would justify the 
successive invasions of the Danes and Anglo-Normans, and also, 
we suppose, of the Puritans, as praiseworthy attempts to intro- 
duce into Ireland the municipal system, so productive of good 
elsewhere throughout Europe. 

There is no doubt that municipal rights have been of im- 
mense advantage to European society, as constituted at the time 
of their introduction. They formed the germ of a new class, 
destined to be the ruling class of the world, by whom human 
rights were first to be understood and proclaimed, and the neces- 
sary amount of freedom granted to all and secured by just laws 
justly administered. Christianity is the true source of all those 
rights, as Christian morality ought to be their standard. 

But what an amount of human misery was first required, in 
order that such blessed results might follow, merely because reli- 
gion, which was and ever had been steadily working to the same 
end, was altogether set aside, and its assistance even despised in 



lEELAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 173 

the mighty change! And after all — we might say in conse- 
quence — how limited has the boon practically become ! How 
few are the nations, eyen in our days, which understand impar- 
tiality, moderation, justice ! How soon will mankind become 
sufficiently enlightened to settle down peacefully in the enjoy- 
ment of those blessings of civil liberty proclaimed and trumpeted 
to the four winds of heaven, yet in no place rightly understood 
and equitably shared ? 

Ireland never knew those municipal rights from which have 
flowed so many evils, side by side with so few blessings, because 
their essential elements were never found there. What the 
future may develop, no man can say. It is time, however, for 
all to see that the nation is equal to any rights to which men are 
said to be entitled. 

HI. The great intellectual movement set on foot in Europe 
during the middle ages, by the numerous universities which 
sprang up everywhere, under the fostering care of Popes or 
Christian monarchs, failed to reach the island, in consequence of 
its exclusion from the European family ; yet even this was not 
for her an unmitigated evil, though certainly the greatest loss 
she sustained. While Europe, during the eighth and ninth cen- 
turies, was in total darkness, Ireland alone basked in the light 
of science, whose lustre, shining in her numerous schools, attract- 
ed thither by its brightness the youth of all nations, whom she 
received with a generosity unbounded. ITot content with this, 
she sent forth her learned and holy men to spread the light 
abroad and dispel the thick darkness, to establish seats of learn- 
ing as focuses whence should radiate the light of truth on a world 
buried in barbarism. 

And when the warm sunshine, created or kept alive by her, 
sheds its rays on Italy, on France, on Germany, and England it- 
self, all her own schools are closed, her once great universities 
destroyed. Clonard, Clonfert, Armagh, Bangor, Clonmacnoise, 
are desolate, and the wealthy Anglo-lNorman prelates find their 
purses empty when the question arises of restoring or forming a 
single centre of intellectual development. The natural conse- 
quences should have been darkness, barbarism, gross ignorance. 
Ireland never fell to that depth of spiritual desolation. Her 
sons, though deprived of all exterior help, would still feed for 
centuries on their own literary treasures. All the way down 
to the Stuart dynasty, the nation preserved, not only her clans, 
her princes, and her brehon laws, but also her shanachies, her 
books, her ancient literature and traditions. These the feudal 
barons could not rob her of; and if they would not repay her, 
in some measure, for what they took away, by flooding her with 
the new methods of thought, of knowledge, of scientific investi- 
gation, at least they could not destroy her old manuscripts, wipe 



174 lEELAND IN" THE MIDDLE AGES. 

ont from her memory the old songs, snatch the immortal harp 
from the hands of her bards, nor silfence the lips of her priests from 
giving vent to those bursts of impassioned eloquence which are 
natural to them and must out. Hence there was no tenth cen- 
tury of darkness for her — let us bear this in mind — • light never 
deserted her, but continued to shine on her from within, despite 
the refusal of her masters to unlock for her the floodgates of 
knowledge. 

For this reason was it not to her an unmitigated loss ; but 
there is another and, perhaps, a stronger still. 

We should be careful not to attribute to what is good the 
abuse made of it by men ; yet the good is sometimes the occasion 
of evil ; and so it was with those great, admirable, and much-to- 
be-regretted universities. 

They imparted to the mind of man an impulse which the 
pride and ambition of man turned to his intellectual ruin. What 
was intended for the spread of true knowledge and faith became 
in the end the source of spiritual pride, the natural fosterer of 
doubt and negation. Modern science, so called, that incarnation 
of vanity, sophistry, error, and delusion, comes indirectly from 
those universities of the middle ages ; and it Avas chiefly at the 
time of what is called, the revival of learning, that the great rev- 
olution in science came about, which changed the intellectual 
gold into dross, the once divine ambrosia of knowledge, served to 
happy mortals in mediseval times, into poison. 

That pretended "revival of learning" can never be men- 
tioned in connection with Ireland ; and the " idolatry of art," 
and corruption of morals, never crossed the channel which God 
set between Great Britain and the Island of Saints. 

Another revival, though of a very difi'erent character, was, 
however, actually taking place in Erin at that very period, when 
the Wars of the Eoses gave her breathing-time, which we relate 
in the words of a modern Irish Avriter, as a conclusion to the re- 
flections we have indulged in : 

" Within this period lived Margaret of Oftaly, the beautiful and 
accomplished queen of O'Carrol, King of Ely. She and her hus- 
band were munificent patrons of literature, art, and science. On 
Queen Margaret's special invitation, the literati of Ireland and 
Scotland, to the number of nearly three thousand, held a " ses- 
sion" for the furtherance of literary and scientific interests at 
her palace near Killeagh, in Offaly, the entire assemblage being 
the guests of the king and queen during their stay. 

" The nave of the great church of Da Sinchell was converted 
for the occasion into a banqueting-hall, where Margaret herself 
inaugurated the proceedings by placing two massive chalices of 
gold, as oflerings, on the high altar, and committing two orphan 
children to the custody of nurses to be fostered at her charge. 



IRELAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 175 

Robed in clotli of gold, this illustrious lady, wlio was as distin- 
guislied for her beauty as for lier generosity, sat in queenly state 
in one of the galleries of the church, surrounded by the clergy, the 
brehons, and her private friends, shedding a lustre on the scene 
which was passing below, while her husband, who had often en- 
countered England's greatest generals in battle, remained 
mounted on a charger outside the church, to bid the guests 
welcome and see that order was preserved. The invitations 
were issued, and the guests arranged according to a list prepared 
by O'Carrol's chief brehon ; and the second entertainment, 
which took place at Rathangan, was a supplemental one, to 
embrace such men of learning as had not been brought together 
at the former feast." — (A, M. 0^ Sullivan.) 

Such was the true " revival of learning " in Ireland — a return 
to her old traditional teaching. If this peaceful time had been 
of longer duration, there is no doubt that her old schools would 
have flourished anew, and men in subsequent ages might have 
compared the results of the two systems : the one producing, 
with true enlightenment, peace, concord, faith, and piety, though 
confined to the insignificant compass of one small island ; tlie 
other resulting in the mental anarchy so rife to-day, and spread- 
ing all over the rest of Europe. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

THE IRISH AISTD THE TITDOES. HENET Vm. 

By losing tlie only bond of unity — the power vested in tlie 
Ard-Rigli — wliicli lield the various parts of the island together, 
Ireland lost all power of exercising any combined action. The 
nations were as numerous as the clans, and the interests as 
diverse as the families. They possessed, it is true, the same re- 
ligion, and in the observance of its precepts and. practices they 
often found a remedy for their social evils ; but religion, not en- 
countering any opposition from any quarter, with the exception 
of the minor differences existing between the native clergy and 
the English dignitaries, was generally considered as out of the 
question in their wranglings and contentions. We shall see how 
the blows struck at it by the English monarchs welded into one 
that people, were the cause of that union now so remarkable 
among them, and really constituted the only bond that ever 
linked them together. 

Before dwelling on these considerations, let us glance a 
moment at the state of the country prior to the attempt of intro- 
ducing Protestantism there. 

The English Pale was reduced at this period to one half of 
five counties in Leinster and Meath ; and even within those 
boundaries the O'Kavanaghs, O'Byrnes, O'Moores and others, 
retained their customs, their brehon laws, their language and 
traditions, often making raids into the very neighborhood of the 
capital, and parading their gallowglasses and kerns within twenty 
miles of Dublin. 

The nobility and the people were in precisely the same state 
which they had known for centuries. The few Englishmen who 
had long ago settled in the country had become identified with 
the natives, had adopted their manners, language, and laws, so 
offensive at first to the supercilious Anglo-JSTormans. 

But a revolution was impending, owing chiefly to the change 
lately introduced into the religion of England, by Henry Tudor. 
It is important to study the first attempt of the kind in Ireland ; 



BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 1Y7 

not only because it became the occasion of establishing for a 
lengthy period a real unanimity among the people — giving 
birth to the nation as it were — but also for the right understand- 
ing of the word " rebellion," which had been so freely used 
before toward the natives, and which was now about to receive 
a new interpretation. 

The English had once deceived the Irish, exacting their sub- 
mission in the twelfth century by foisting upon them the word 
homage: they would deceive Europe by a constant use, or 
rather misuse, of the words "rebel" and "rebellion." By the 
enactment of new laws they pronounce the simple attachment to 
the old religion of the country a denial of sovereign right, and 
consequently an act of overt treason ; and the Irish shall be 
butchered mercilessly for the sake of the religion of Christ with- 
out winning the name, though they do the crown, of martyrdom ; 
for Europe is to be so effectually deceived, that even the Church 
will hesitate to proclaim those religious heroes, saints of God. 

But the great fact of the birth of a nation, in the midst of 
those throes of anguish, will lessen their atrocity in the mind 
of the reader, and explain to some extent the wonderful designs 
of Providence. 

From an English state paper, published by M. Haverty, we 
learn that, in 1515, a few years before the revolt of Luther, the 
island was divided into more than sixty separate states, or 
" regions," " some as big as a shire, some more, some less." 

Had it not been for this division and the constant feuds it 
engendered, in the north between the O'lSTeills and O'Donnells, 
in the south between the Geralclines (Desmonds and Kildares) 
and the Butlers (Ormonds), the authority of the English king 
would have been easily shaken off. The policy so constantly 
adopted by England in after-times — a policy well expressed by 
the Latin adage. Divide et impeva — preserved the English power 
in L-eland, and finally brought the island into outward subjec- 
tion at least, to Great Britain — a subjection which the Irish con- 
science and the Irish voice and Irish arms yet did not cease to 
protest against and deny. But the nation was divided, and it 
required some great and general calamity to unite them together 
and make of them one people. 

That, even spite of those divisions, they were at the time on 
the point of driving the English out of the island, we need no 
better proofs than the words of the English themselves. The 
Archbishop of Dublin, John Allen, the creature of "Wolsey, who 
was employed by the crafty cardinal to begin the work of the 
spoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earl 
of Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the Dublin 
Council, to England, to report that " the English laws, manners, 
and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow com- 
12 



178 BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 

pass of twenty miles ; " and that, unless tlie laws were duly en- 
forced, " tlie little place," as the Pale was called, " would be re- 
duced to the same condition as the remainder of the kingdom ; " 
that is to say, the Pale itself, which had been brought to such in- 
significant limits, would belong exclusively to the Irish. 

It was while affairs were at this pass that the revolt of " silk- 
en Thomas" excited the wrath of Henry YIII., and brought 
about the destruction of almost the whole Ivildare family. 

It was about this time, also, that "Wolsey fell, and Cromwell, 
having replaced him as Chancellor of England, with Cranmer as 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Peformation began in England 
with the divorce of the king, who shortly after assumed suprem- 
acy in spirituals as a prerogative of the crown, and made Parlia- 
ment — in those days himself — supreme law-giver in Church and 
state. 

Cromwell, known in history as the creature and friend of 
Cranmer, like his protector a secret pervert to the Protestant 
doctrines of Germany, and the first arch-plotter for the destruc- 
tion of Catholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the 
English power in Ireland by forcing on that country the suprem- 
acy of the king in religious matters, knowing well that such a 
step would drive the Irish into resistance, but believing that he 
could easily subdue them and make the island Enghsh. 

Having been appointed, not only Chancellor of England, but 
also king's vicar-general in temporals and spirituals, Cromwell 
inquired of his English agents in Ireland the best means of at- 
taining his object — the subjection of the country. Their report 
is preserved among the state papers, and some of their sugges- 
tions deserve our attentive consideration. If Henry YIII. had 
consented to follow their advice, he would have himself inaugu- 
rated the bloody policy so well carried out long after by another 
Crom^vell, the celebrated " Protector." 

The report sets forth that the most efficient mode of proceed- 
ing was to exterminate the lyeople y but Henry thought it suffi- 
cient to gain the nobility over — the people being beneath his no- 
tice. 

The agents of the vicar-general were right in their atrocious 
proposal. They knew the Irish nation well, and that the only 
way to separate Ireland from the See of Peter -was to make the 
country a desert. 

Their means of bringing about the destruction of the people 
was starvation. The corn was to be destroyed systematically, 
and the cattle killed or driven away. Their operations, it is 
true, were limited to the borders of the Pale. The gentle Spen- 
ser, at a later period, proposed to extend them to all Munster, 
and it was a special glory reserved for the " Protector " to carry 
out this policy through almost the whole of the island. 



BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 179 

, " Tlie very living of tlie Irisliiy," says tlie report, " dotli 
clearly consist in two things : take away the same from them, 
and they are passed for ever to recover, or yet to annoy any sub- 
ject in Ireland. Take first from them their corn, and as much 
as cannot be husbanded, and had into the hands of such as shall 
dwell and inhabit in their lands, to burn and destroy the same, 
so as the Irishry shall not live thereupon ; and then to have their 
cattle and beasts, which shall be most hardest to come by, and 
yet, with guides and policy, they may be oft had and taken." 

The report goes on to point out, most elaborately and ingen- 
iously, every artifice and plan for carrying this policy into effect. 
But here we have, condensed, as it were, in a nutshell, and coolly 
and carefully set forth, the system which was adopted later on, 
and almost crowned with a fiendish success. But the moment 
for the execution of this barbarous scheme had not yet come, and 
we find no positive results following immediately. 

This project, complete as it was, was far from being the only 
one proposed at that time for " rooting out the Irish " from Ire- 
land. Mr. Prendergast, in his " Introduction to the Cromwell- 
ian Settlement," says : 

" The Irish were never deceived as to the purport of the 
English, and, though the Pale had not been extended for two 
hundred and forty years, their first persuasion in the reign of 
Henry YIII. was, that the original design was not abandoned. 
' Irishmen are of opinion among themselves,' said Justice Cusack 
to the king, ' that Englishmen will one day banish them from 
their lands forever.' " 

In fact, project after project was then proposed for clearing 
Ireland of Irish to the Shannon. Some went so far as already to 
contemplate their utter extirpation ; but " there was no pre- 
cedent for it found in the chronicles of the conquest. Add to 
this the difficulty of finding people to reinhabit it if. suddenly 
unpeopled. 

" The chiefs and gentleinen of the Irish only were to be driven 
from their properties," according to some of those projects, " and 
they only were to be dnven into exile, while their lands should 
be given to Englishmen." 

" The king, however, seems to have been satisfied with con- 
fiscating the estates of the Earl of Kildare and of his family. 
Fierce and bloody though he was, there was something lion-like 
in his nature ; notwithstanding all those promptings, he left to 
the Irish and old English their possessions, and seemed even 
anxious to secure them, but failed to do so for want of time." 

We think Mr. Prendergast's judgment of Henry YIII. too 
favorable. Generosity did not prompt him to spare the people 
and the nobles, Avith the exception of the Kildares. We believe 
that he never contemplated the extirpation oi the peoj>le, because 



180 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

such a political element could not enter into his mind. As for 
the nobles, he wished to gain them over, because of the long 
wars he foresaw necessary to bring about their utter extinction 
or exile. 

He adopted, accordingly, a plan of his own, holding firm to 
his design of having his new title of " Head of the Church " ac- 
knowledged in Ireland as well as in England. 

Cromwell commenced his work by two measures which had 
met with perfect success in the latter country, but which were 
destined to fire the sister isle from end to end, and make " the 
people," in course of time, really one. These measures were acts 
of Parliament : 1. Establishing the king's spiritual supremacy ; 
2. Suppressing, at once, all the monasteries existing in the coun- 
try, and giving their property to the nobles who were willing to 
apostatize. 

The necessity of convening Parliament resulted from the fail- 
ure of the first attempt, already made, to establish the king's su- 
premacy. Browne, the successor of Allen in the See of Dublin, 
a rank Lutheran at heart, had been commissioned by the king 
and by Cranmer, his consecrator, to establish the new doctrine 
at once. His want of success, is thoroughly explained in a letter 
to Cromwell, which is still preserved, and which remains one of 
the proudest monuments of the steadfastness of the Irish in their 
religion. 

He complains that not only the clergy, but the " common 
people," were "more zealous in their blindness than the saints 
and martyrs in truth, in the beginning of the Gospel, " and 
" such was their hostility against him that his life was in danger." 

And all this in Dublin, in the heart of the Pale, where the 
chief antagonist of the new doctrine, " the leader of the people " 
against this first attempt at schism, was Cromer, the Archbishop 
of Armagh, an Englishman himself ! So that those prelates of 
England, who, with the exception of the noble Eisher, had all 
yielded without a murmur of opposition to the will of Henry, 
could find no followers, not even of their own nation, in Ireland, 
so much had their faith been strengthened by contact with that 
of "the common people." 

A Parliament was needed, therefore, and that one which was 
to be the instrument of introducing the great English measure, 
met for the first time in Dublin, on the 1st of May, 1536 ; but, 
being prorogued, it met again in 1537, and did not complete its 
work until once more summoned in 15-11, when the old Irish 
element was for the first and last time introduced at its sitting, 
in order, if possible, to consecrate the new doctrine by having it 
solemnly accepted by the old race. 

This Parliament, which was first convened in Dublin, Mc- 
Geoghegan says, " adjourned to Kilkenny, thence to Cashel, after- 



BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 181 

ward to Limerick, and lastly to Dublin again." The cliief cause 
of these interruptions was the difficulty of bringing an Irish Par- 
liament, even when composed of Englishmen, as was the case up 
to 1541, to pass the decrees of supremacy, denial of Roman au- 
thority, etc., which had been so readily accepted in England. 

The Irish Parliaments, as far back as we can see, were com- 
posed not only of lords, spiritual and temporal, and of depu- 
ties of the Commons, but each diocese possessed also the right 
to send there three ecclesiastical proctors, who, by reason of their 
office, owned neither benefice nor fief, and were therefore at 
liberty to vote, fearless of attainder and confiscation, in accord- 
ance with their conscience and their sense of right. 

This feature of the Irish assemblies, even when no represent- 
ative of the native race sat in them, was a fatal obstacle to the 
success of the scheme devised by Browne and executed by 
Cromwell. Accordingly, we are not astonished to find that, by 
an act of despotism not uncommon during the reign of Henry 
YIII., the proctors were excluded from Parliament, which thus 
became an obedient tool in the hands of the government. 

l!^ot only, therefore, were several state measures carried in 
accordance with the wish of the king, but the great object pro- 
posed by the meeting of this assembly was finally obtained ; and, 
following the lead of the English Parliament, Henry YIII. and 
his successors were confirmed in the title of " Supreme Head 
of the Church in Ireland," with power of reforming and correc- 
ting errors in religion. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, 
and the Pope's authority declared a usurpation. 

Henry, however, foreseeing that all these favorite measures 
of his policy, being carried by English votes in a purely English 
assembly, though on Irish soil, would meet with universal op- 
position from all the native lords, conceived the idea of summon- 
ing the great Irish chieftains to a new meeting of Parliament, 
from which he expected that a moral revolution would be efifect- 
ed in the island. Sir Anthony St. Leger, created deputy in Au- 
gust, 1510, was thought a likely man to be intrusted with so deli- 
cate a mission. He conducted it with political prudence, that is 
to say, with a judicious mixture of kindness and fraud, which suc- 
ceeded beyond all expectations. 

In order to prepare the way for hoodwinking the Irish chief- 
tains, favors of every kind were showered upon them, to wit, titles 
and estates, chiefly those of suppressed monasteries ; and St. 
Leger, by an alternate use of force and diplomacy, at length ef- 
fected that the Irish sh :;ul:"' c.y.iseiit to accept titles. Con O'l^eill, 
the head of the house of Tyrone, went to England, accompanied 
by O' Kervellim, Bishop of Glogher, and was admitted to an 
audience by the king. Henry adopted toward those proud 
Irishmen a policy utterly difi'erent from that he had used with 



182 BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 

tlie Englisli lords. These latter were merely threatened with his 
displeasure, and with the feudal penalties he knew so well how to 
inflict ; the others were received at court as favorites and dear 
friends ; a royal courtesy, kind expressions, a smiling face — such 
were the arms he employed against the " barbarous Irish." 

Tyrone, O'Donnell, and others, were not proof against his 
cunning. The first renounced his title of prince and the glori- 
ous name of O'lSTeill, to receive in return that of Earl of Tyrone. 
Manus O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnel. Both received 
back the lands which they had oifered to the king, and their 
example was followed by a great number of inferior lords. 
Among them, two Magenisses were dubbed knights ; Murrough 
O'Brien, of North Munster, was made Earl of Thomond and 
Baron of Inchiquin ; De Burgo, or McWilliams, was created 
Earl of Clanricard, and a host of others submitted in like man- 
ner, and received the new titles which henceforth became con- 
spicuous in Irish history. 

This was the beginning of the gradual suppression of the 
clans. Many of these nobles, unfortunately, not content with 
receiving back, at the hands of the king, the lands which had 
come into their possession from a long line of ancestors, and 
which really belonged not to them personally, but to the clans 
whose heads the'y were, greedily snatched at the estates of re- 
ligious orders, whose suppression was the first consequence of 
the schism in Ireland, which will soon occupy our attention. 

The Irish chieftains had already seen Wolsey, a cardinal in 
full communion with Rome, suppress forty monasteries in the 
island. They might therefore imagine that the confiscation of a 
still greater number on the part of the king was a thing not al- 
together incompatible Avith the religion of the monarch, and that 
the fact of their sharing in the plunder was not entirely opposed 
to their titles of Catholics and subjects of Borne. Such is human 
conscience when blinded by self-interest. 

The king thought that he had gained over the nobility, 
— which was all he wished — and the last session of the previous 
Parliament of 1536 and the following years might now be held 
in order to consecrate the unholy work. 

" On the 12th of June, 1541," says Mr. Haverty, " a Parlia- 
ment was held in Dublin, at which the novel sight was witnessed 
of Irish chieftains sitting for the first time with English lords. 
O'Brien appeared there by his procurators and attorneys, and 
Kavanagh, O'More, O'Reilly, McWilliams, and others, took 
their seats in person, the addrsSoC' of the Speaker and of the 
Lord-Chancellor being interpreted to them in Irish by the Earl 
of Ormond. An act was unanimously passed, conferring on 
Henry YIII. and his successors the title of King of Ireland, in- 
stead of that of Lord of Ireland, which the English kings, since 



BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 183 

the days of Jolm, had hitherto borne. This act was hailed with 
great rejoicings in Dublin, and on the following Sunday, the 
lords and gentlemen of Parliament went in procession to St. 
Patrick's Cathedral, where solemn high mass was sung by Arch- 
bishop Browne, after which the law was proclaimed and a Te 
Dewrn chanted." 

It is worthy of remark that in the session of 1541, at which 
alone the Irish chieftains appeared, not a word was said of the 
supremacy of the king in spirituals. Sir James Ware, who gives 
the various decrees with more detail than usual, makes no men- 
tion of this pet measure of the king and of the Lutheran Arch- 
bishop Browne, but it was only part and parcel of the Parliament 
of 1536, prorogued successively to Kilkenny, Cashel, Limerick, 
and finally again to Dublin. At its first sitting the law of 
supremacy was passed and proclaimed as law of Ireland. Noth- 
ing was said of it in the various sessions that followed, includ- 
ing that of 1541 ; and yet the Irish chieftains were supposed 
to have sanctioned it, inasmuch as it was a measure previously 
passed in the same Parliament : and the suppression of various 
abbeys and monasteries having been openly decreed in the final 
session, as a result of the king's supremacy — Rome not having 
been consulted, of course — all the signers of the last decree were 
supposed to have thereby sanctioned and adopted the previous 
ones. Thus O'lSTeill, O'Reilly, O'More, and the rest, without be- 
ing aware of the fact, became schismatics, though many of them, 
perhaps all, did not see the connection between the various ses- 
sions of that long Parliament. Certainly, if, on leaving the Dub- 
lin Cathedral, where they had heard the archbishop's mass and 
assisted at that solemn Te Deum^ they had been told that that 
act was intended to consecrate the surrender of the religion of 
their ancestors, and the commencement of a frightful revolution, 
which would end in the destruction of their national existence, 
almost of their very race, they would have incredulously laughed 
to scorn the unwelcome prophet. 

But even if, as we may well believe, those Irish lords had 
really been the victims of deception, and had not, as a body, 
been corrupted by the sacrilegious gift of suppressed monasteries, 
ihe people, their clansmen, prompted by the vivid impressions 
and unerring instincts of religious faith and patriotic nationality, 
which were ever living in their breasts, resented the weakness 
of their chieftains as a national defection and a real apostasy, and 
took immediate steps to bring the lords to their senses, and to 
prevent the spread of English corruption. 

All who had received titles from Henry, and surrendered to 
him the deeds of their lands, as if those lands belonged to them 
personally, and not to the clans collectively, all those, particular- 
ly, who had enriched tljemselves by the plunder of religious 



184 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

houses, and who had taken any part in the destruction of the 
religious orders so dear to the Irish heart, were soon made to feel 
the indignation which those events had excited among the na- 
tive clansmen, north and south. And those of the chieftains who 
had really been deceived, and had preserved in their hearts all 
through a strong love for their religion and country, were re- 
called to a sense of their error, and brought back to a sense of 
their duty by the unmistakable voice of the " people." 

While the nobles were still in England, feted by Henry in 
his royal palace of Greenwich, renouncing their Irish names to 
become English earls and barons, the Ulster chief, protesting that 
he would never again take the name of O'JSTeill, but content him- 
self with the title of Earl of Tyrone ; while O'Brien was being- 
created Earl of Thomond ; McWilliams, Earl of Clanricard ; 
O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell ; Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyann ; 
and Fitzpatrick, Baron of Ossory ; the clans at home, hearing in 
due time of those real treasons, were concerting plans for making 
their lords repent of their weakness or treachery, and for admin- 
istering to them due punishment on their return. 

O'Keill, " the first of his race who had accepted an English 
title," on landing in Ireland, learned that his people had deposed 
him, and elected in his stead his son John the Proud, better 
known as Shane O'JS^eill ; O'Donnell, on his arrival, met most 
of his clan, headed by his son, up in arms against him ; the new 
Earl of Clanricard had already been deposed by his people and 
another McWilliams, with" a Gaelic name, elected in his place ; 
and so with the rest. 

But, unfortunately, the Government of England was strong 
enough to support its favorite chieftains, and it found some Irish 
tools ready at hand to form the nucleus of an Irish party in 
their favor. Thus, unanimity no longer marked the decisions 
of the clans ; two parties were formed in each of them, the one 
national, comprising the great bulk of the people, the real, true 
people ; the other English, composed of a few apostate Irishmen, 
backed by the power of England. Thus, henceforth we hear of 
the O'Reilly, and the h'mgs O'Reilly, etc. 

Henry YIII. seemed, therefore, with the help of his minister, 
St. Leger, to have succeeded in breaking up the clans, after the 
Irish national government had been broken up long before. 
Confusion of titles, property, and traditions became worse con- 
founded. How could the shanachies, bards, and brehons, any 
longer agree in their pedigrees, songs, and legal decisions 'l 
England had thus early adopted in Ireland the stern and cold- 
hearted policy which, centuries later, she used to destroy the na- 
tive and Mohammedan dynasties in Hindostan. It was not yet 
divide et imjoera on a large scale, but the division was pushed, 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 185 

as far as lay in the power England, to the very last elements of 
the social system. 

From this time forward, then, we must not be surprised to 
find England welcoming to her bosom unworthy sons of Ireland, 
whom she wished to make her tools. There was always, either 
in Dublin or London, a sufficient supply of materials out of 
which Givwii's chiefs might be manufactured ; the government 
made it part of its policy to hold in its hands and train to its 
purposes certain members of each of the ruling families — of the 
O'Neills, O'Keillys, O'Donnells, O'Connors, and others. 

It was no longer, therefore, the rooting out and extermi- 
nating policy which prevailed, but one as fatal in its results, 
which would have utterly destroyed Irish national feeling, to set 
up in its place, not only English manners, language, and cus- 
toms, but also English schism, heresy, philosophical speculations 
— as the Eour Masters have it — finally, materialism and nihil- 
ism. 

But, in real sober fact, the scheme proved almost an utter 
failure, owing to the far-seeing good sense of the people. The 
national spirit revived among the upper classes, both native and 
of English descent — owing to the decided stand taken by the in- 
ferior clansmen. 

The Desmonds and Kildares, in the south, the O'Donnells, 
Maguires, and others, in the north, soon showed themselves ani- 
mated by a new spirit of ardent Catholicism ; created, in fact, a 
new nation, quite apart from, or rather embracing, clanship, well- 
nigh destroyed the English power, kept Elizabeth, during the 
whole of her reign, in constant agitation and fear, and would 
have succeeded in recovering their independence, and securing 
freedom of worship, had not their good-nature been imposed 
upon by the hypocrisy and faithlessness of the Stuarts, to whom 
they always looked for freedom in the practice of their religion, 
without ever obtaining it. 

Thus did the people, the Irish race, thwart the policy of 
Henry, who sought to gain over the nobility. Their stubborn re- 
sistance to the vastly-increased and constantly-increasing English 
power, grew at last to such proportions, and became so discour- 
aging to their oppressors, that the old policy of utter extermina- 
tion was resumed by Cromwell and the Orange party of the fol- 
lowing age. 

The refusal of the people, that is to say, of the bulk of the 
nation, to submit to the policy of their chieftains, and the deter- 
mination to repudiate that policy by deposing its supporters and 
choosing others in their stead, was most happy in its effect on 
their whole future history. 

The leaders, by accepting the new titles bestowed on them 
by the English kings, by taking their seats in Parliament, and 

/ 

/ 



186 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

concurring in tlie various measures there passed, subjected them- 
selves to a foreign rule, surrendered to this rule the tribe-lands, 
which it was not in their power to surrender of themselves, gave 
up, in fact, their nationality, and became English subjects. The 
action of the clansmen reversed all the fatal consequences result- 
ing from those acts. They remained a nation distinct from the 
English, whose laws they had never either admitted or accepted. 
And, as the clan spirit declined, under the policy of England, it 
only made way for a new and a greater spirit — religious feeling, 
the bond of a common religion assaulted — ^which, henceforth, lay 
at the bottom of the whole struggle — which, for the first time in 
their history, blended into one whole the broken clans, gave them 
a unity and a consistency never known till then, and thus the 
real nation was born. 

They might boast, therefore, not only of not having lost. their 
autonomy, but of being more firmly than ever knit together ; 
they could conclude treaties of alliance with foreign powers, 
without committing treason, and they soon began to use that 
power ; they could even declare war against England, and it was 
not rebellion. The successors of Henry YIII. acted constantly 
as though the Irish nation had really subjected itself to English 
kings and English rule, as though the acceptance of a few titles 
by a few chieftains (who were deposed by their people as soon as 
the fact was known) signified an acknowledgment on the part 
of the Irish people of their absorption by the English feudal sys- 
tem ; they appeared " horrified " when they saw the successors 
of those chieftains reject those titles and resume their own 
names; and they called the Irish "rebels" and "traitors" for 
going to war with England — a country they had never acknowl- 
edged as their ruler — and introducing into their country Spanish, 
Italian, and French troops as allies. 

The explanation of the whole mystery consisted in the simple 
fact that the people, the nation, had steadily refused to sanction 
the act of their leaders ; and all the pretensions of English kings, 
statesmen, and lawyers, were valueless. Those Irishmen who 
subsequently entered into the various Geraldine and Ulster con- 
federacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid, were 
neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independent state, 
possessing their international rights as citizens of any indepen- 
dent country. This we have seen in a previous chapter, and Sir 
John Davies has been obliged to confess its truth, admitting the 
difference between a tributary and a subject nation. 

A glance shows us the importance of the almost unanimous 
outcry of the clansmen of Tyrone, Tyrconnell, and of other parts 
of Ireland. Owing to the patriotic feeling of these, nothing re- 
mained for the English but to punish the Irish people for their 
resolve of holding to their religion, and to declare a religious 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 187 

war against tliem, though, they called them all the time rebels 
and traitors. This is the view an impartial historian should take 
of those mighty events. 

But, it is well to look more closely at this new element, 
which then showed itself for the first time in Irish national life, 
the 2?60j)le, irrespective of clanship ; the people, as influencing the 
leaders, and thus becoming a living — nay, a ruling power in the 
state. And, lest any of our readers should not be convinced 
that such really was the case, we mention here a fact, which will 
come more prominently before us in the next chapter, that, at 
the end of Elizabeth's reign, the efforts of all her large armies 
and her tortuous policy for changing the religion of the country, 
resulted in the grand total of sixty converts to Protestantism 
from the noble class, not one of the clansmen turning apostate ! 

Bridget of Kildare would not have been surprised at this, to 
jud^e by what we have previously heard from her. 

In order to find the explanation of this wonderful fact, we 
must compare the Irish people with other nationalities, and we 
may then easily distinguish its peculiar features, so persistent, so 
enduring, we may say, indestructible. We shall find that what 
this people was three hundred years ago, it is to this day, with a 
greater unity of feeling, devotedness to principle, and higher 
aims than any people of modern times. 

In antiquity, the people, in the Christian sense of the Avord, 
never appeared in the field of history. In the despotic countries 
of Asia and Africa, there was and could be no question of such a 
thing ; it was an inert mass used at will by the despot. The 
Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mere oli- 
garchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slaves for 
mercantile or warlike purposes. In the republics of Greece and 
Italy, the aristocracy ruled, and when, after centuries of bloody 
struggles and revolutions, the subjects of Eome were finally 
granted the rights of citizenship, the despotism of the empire 
suddenly appeared, crushing both ^p?e5s and patricians. 

Whenever in those ancient governments we find the lower 
classes unable longer to bear the heavy yoke imposed upon them, 
revolting against a despotism which had grown insupportable, 
and claiming their natural rights, it was merely a surging of 
waves raised to mountain-height by the fury of a sudden storm, 
but soon allayed and subdued beneath the inflexible will of stem 
rulers. The people was a mere mob, whose violence, when suc- 
cessful, fatally carried destruction with it ; and, though it is 
seemingly full of a terrible power which nothing can resist, its 
power lasts but for a very short time. Could it only outlast 
the destruction of all superior rulers, it would end by destroying 
itself. 

If we would meet with the people, such as we conceive it to 



188 BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 

be in accordance with onr Cliristian ideas, we must come down 
to that period of time which followed close npon tlie organization 
of Christendom, namely, to the much-abused middle ages. Feu- 
dalism, it is true, withstood its expansion for a long time, kept 
alive the remnants of slavery which it had found in Europe at 
its birth, or at best invented serfdom as a somewhat milder sub- 
stitute for the former degradation of man. But feudalism itself 
was not strong enough to prevent the natural consequences of 
the vigorous Christianity which at that time prevailed ; and 
kings, dukes, and feudal bishops, were compelled to grant char- 
ters which insured the freedom of the subject. Then the people 
appeared, in the cities first, afterward in the country, where, 
however, the peasants had still to drag on for a weary time the 
chains of secular serfdom. 

Thus the people lived in Spain, where they fought valiantly 
under their lords for centuries against the Crescent, so that in 
some provinces all classes were ennobled^ and not a single plebeian 
was to be found, which simply means that the whole mass of the 
citizens formed the 'people. Thus the people had an early exist- 
ence in Italy, where every city almost became a centre of freedom 
and activity, notwithstanding strife and continual feuds. Thus 
the people had its life in France, where the learned men of Cath- 
olic universities determined with precision the limits of kingly 
power, and where the outburst of the Crusades brought all 
classes together to fight for Christ, forming but one body 
engaged alike throughout in a holy cause. Thus, finally, the 
people had its life even in Germany and England, where real 
liberty, though of later birth, afterward remained more deeply 
rooted in social life. 

In all those countries, it was called populus Christianus / it 
had its associations, its guilds, its Christian customs, its privi- 
leges, its rights. Its existence was acknowledged by law, and it 
possessed everywhere either Christian codes, or at least local cus- 
toms for its safeguards. It gradually grew into a great power, 
and took the name of the " Third Estate," ranking directly after 
the clergy and nobility. Its members knew and respected the 
gradations of the social hierarchy as then existing. The mon- 
archs in most countries, in France chiefly, sided with it whenever 
the nobles sought to oppress it, and its deputies were heard in 
the Parliaments of the various nations of Christendom. 

How many millions of human beings lived ha]3pily during 
several centuries under these great institutions of mediasval 
times ! And if the members of the people at that time could sel- 
dom rise above their order, except through the Church, this 
unfortunate inability often prevented dangerous and subversive 
ambitions, and was thus really the source and cause of happiness 
to all. Governments at that period lasted for thousands of years ; 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 189 

men could rely on the stability of tilings, and great enterprises 
could be undertaken and carried to a successful termination. 

But tlirougliout all Europe, witli tlie single exception of Ire- 
land, the people had to contend against the feudal power ; and 
it was only very gradually, and step by step, that it could creep up 
to its rights. In Ireland, as we have seen, feudalism had failed to 
strike root ; so that the clansmen who represented there what 
the people did elsewhere, never having been subject to slavery 
or serfdom, possessed all the liberties which the ordinary class 
of men can claim. They had always borne their share in the 
affairs of their own territory, at least by the willing help they 
afforded to their leaders, during the Danish, wars chiefly, and 
afterward throughout the four hundred years of struggle with the 
Anglo-lN^ormans. The people were the real conquerors under the 
lead of their chieftains, and the perpetual enjoyment of their 
beloved customs was the privilege of the least among them as 
much as of tha proudest of their nobles. They themselves were 
well aware of this, and to their own efforts no less than to the 
heads of the clans they attributed the advantages which they had 
gained. 

Thus, when the conduct of their chieftain was not in accord- 
ance with what the clansmen considered the right, they were 
ready to express their disapproval of his actions by deposing him, 
and placing their allegiance at the service of the man of their 
choice. 

But though this course of action is true of the whole period 
of their history, more especially from the date of their becoming 
Christian up to the time when the blows of religious persecution 
welded them into one people, yet they were divided and often at 
war among themselves. But no sooner did the work of perver- 
sion make itself felt among them, than we behold the clansmen 
exhibiting a unity of feeling on many points which never 
marked them before. So that thenceforth the separated clans 
gradually began to merge into Irishmen. 

This unity of feeling showed itself, above all, in the deep love 
for their religion, which at once became universal and all-per- 
vading. This love had undoubtedly existed before, as it could 
scarcely have originated and swollen to such proportions all at 
once ; but as the stroke of the hammer reveals the spark, so the 
force of opposition enkindled the flame and caused it to burst 
forth into view. At the first blow it showed itself throughout 
the island, and thus the people became once and forever united. 

This unity of feeling was displayed likewise in an ardent love 
for their country in contradistinction to the special locality of the 
tribe. Thus arose a true fraternal union with all their country- 
men of whatever county or city. The old antagonism between 
family and family only appeared at fitful and unguarded inter- 



190 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

vals ; but in general eacli one grasped tlie liand of anotlier only 
as a Catholic and an Irishman. 

This is clearly attributable to their religion. Catholicity 
knows no place ; its very name is opposed to restrictions of this 
character. Could it carry out its purpose, which is that of its 
Divine founder, it would make one of all nations ; and, to a cer- 
tain extent, it has achieved this task. Diiferences of character, 
which are deeply impressed in the nature of various branches of 
the human family, are indeed never totally obliterated by it ; but 
such diiferences disappear when kneeling at the same altar and 
receiving the same sacraments. The Catholic religion is the only 
one which is, has ever been, and must ever claim to be, univer- 
sal ; the religions of antiquity were purely local. 

Since the coming of our Lord, no heresy, no schism has ever 
pretended to the reality of a catholic existence, and, if the word 
is self-applied by certain sects, the world laughs at it as a mean- 
ingless thing. The Catholic Church alone has truly claimed and 
possessed such a character. 

But if of all men it makes one family with respect to spiritual 
matters, what unanimity of feeling must it not create in a single 
nation truly imbued with its sph'it, which is attacked for its sake? 
Until the reign of Henry YIII., the Irish, in their struggle with 
England, could summon no religious thought to their aid, since 
England was Catholic also, and the l^orman nobles established 
among them followed the same calendar, possessed the same 
churches, the same creed, the same sacraments. But as soon as 
the English power was stamped with heresy, the opposition to 
that power assumed a religious aspect, and no longer restricted 
itself to the clans immediately attacked, but spread throughout 
the whole nation. 

To bring the case down to some particular point, in order to 
render our meaning more clear, a priest or monk, who was 
hunted down, was no longer sure of refuge in his own district, 
and among men of his own sept merely, but he was equally wel- 
comed in the castle of the chieftain or the hut of the peasant 
through the length and breadth of the land. Any Irishman, sub- 
ject to fine, imprisonment, or torture, for the sake of his religion, 
did not find sympathy restricted to his own circle of friends or 
acquaintances, but, even if tried and prosecuted in a corner of the 
island, far away from his own home, he could count upon the 
sympathy of as many friends as there were Irish Catholics to wit- 
ness his sufferings. This state of things was certainly unknown 
before. 

Heligion, when deep, is the strongest feeling of the human 
heart, and endows the nation steeped in it with an unconquerable 
strength. To judge of the intensity of religious feeling in the 
Irish, it should be remembered that it was the only legacy left 



BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 191 

them after every thing else had been taken away, and, though it 
was the special object of attack, they were to be stripped one by 
one of their old customs, their own chieftains, their houses of 
study and of prayer, their religious and secular teachers, nay, of 
the chance even of educating their children, of the right to pos- 
sess not merely their own soil, but even to cultivate a few acres of 
it, nay, of their very language itself, in a word, of all that makes 
a country dear to man. For ages were they destined to remain 
outcasts and strangers on the soil which was their own, abject 
and ignorant paupers, without the faintest possibility of rising in 
the social scale. 

One thing only did they keep in their hearts, their faith, 
though stripped of all the exterior circumstances which adorn it, 
and reduced to its simplest elements. But at least it was their 
religion, to deprive them of which, all the wealth, resources, ar- 
mies, laws of a powerful nation, were to be strained to the utmost 
during long ages. How, then, could they fail to love and cher- 
ish it, to cling fast to it, as to an inestimable treasure, the only 
real one indeed they could possess on earth, where all else passes 
away ? 

Here, then, always presupposing the paramount influence of 
the grace of God, lay the secret ot that indestructible strength 
and unwearied energy manifested by Irishmen, from the middle 
of the sixteenth century down, and we are enabled thus to ap- 
preciate the value of that unity which persecution alone fastened 
upon them. 

To the love of religion, which was the origin of that unity, 
love of country was soon added, and by love of country we here 
understand the love of the whole island, not merely of the par- 
ticular sept to which the individual belonged, or of the particular 
spot in which he happened to be born. Such had been the divis- 
ions among the people and the chieftains hitherto, that England 
could attack one sept without fearing the revolt of the others, 
nay, was often assisted by an adverse clan. And so thoroughly 
had the Anglo-l^ormans adopted the native manners, that the 
Kildares were frequently at war with the Desmonds, though both 
belonged to the same Geraldine family ; and the Ormonds kept 
up a constant feud with both the Geraldine branches. "Wlien 
Henry YllL almost destroyed the Kildares, we do not find that 
the Desmonds felt their loss at first ; perhaps they even rejoiced 
at it. 

It was the same with the natives, particularly with the 
O'J^eills and the O'Donnells, in the north. The whole island and 
its general interests seemed the concern of no one, so taken up 
were they by the affairs of their own particular locality. And 
this state of feeling had existed from the beginning, even among 
holy men. The songs of Columba, of Cormac McCuUinan, even 



192 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

of tiie Fenian heroes of old, all celebrated the victories of one 
sept over another, or the beauties of some one spot in the island, 
in preference to all others. 

'Nsij, so prevalent was this clannish spirit, even at the begin- 
ning of the religious troubles, that Henry YIII., and Elizabeth 
after him, gained their successes by directing their attacks 
against particular places, so certain were they that the other 
districts would not come to the rescue. 

The feeling of nationality, of what we call patriotism, 
wrestled a long time in the throes of birth, before coming forth, 
and it was only during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign that 
those confederacies were formed, which included the whole coun- 
try and called in even foreign aid. 

But this feeling began to appear as soon as religion was at- 
tacked ; and therefore do we call this epoch the true birth of a 
people. 

And as it is with the people chiefly that we are concerned, it 
is to our purpose to remark here that they gradually lost sight of 
their petty quarrels and local prejudices in losing their chief- 
tains ; they began to look for leaders among themselves, and, 
understanding at last that the whole island was threatened by 
the invading policy of England, they were to fight for the 
whole, and not for any special district. 

Then, for the first time, did Ireland become a reality to them, 
an existing personality, a desolate queen weeping over the fate 
of her children, calling, with the voice of a stricken mother, those 
who survived to her aid, and worthy, by her beauty and misfor- 
tunes, of their most heroic and disinterested efforts. 

Religious feeling, then, first made the Irish a nation, and 
gave them that unity of thought which they now exhibit every- 
where, even in the remotest quarters of the globe, wherever they 
may choose their place of exile. And if there still exists among 
them something of that former predilection for the place where 
they first saw the light, the other parts of Erin are at least in- 
cluded in their deep love, and they would shed their blood for 
their country, irrespective of prejudice of place. 

Thus have they come at last to love each other as men of no 
other nation ever did. In order to understand this thoroughly, 
we must remember that for ages they, as a people, have been 
oppressed and held in bondage by a stern and powerful nation. 
They had to defend themselves in turn against the most open 
and the most insidious attacks. Bereft in many cases of all the 
means of defence, they had nothing left them, save their religion, 
and the support they could aftbrd each other. 

If, by any stretch of imagination, we could place ourselves in 
their position, understand their language when they met each 
other in their huts, in their morasses and bogs, in their mountain 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. . _ 193 

fastnesses and desolate moors, could we only enter into tlieir feel- 
ings and see the working of their minds, we might catch a faint 
conception of the affection which they must have felt for brothers 
waging the deadly fight against the same enemies, and contend- 
ing in a seemingly endless and hopeless struggle against the 
same terrible odds. Union, affection, devotedness, are words 
too weak to serve here. 

For this reason, also,' do we find the Irish people stamped 
with peculiarities which we find in no others. In antiquity, as 
we have said, the people could never rise to any thing greater 
than a mob ; in modern times such has also often been the case. 
With the Irish it is not, and could not be so. Their aim has al- 
ways been too lofty, their struggle of too long duration, their mo- 
rality too genuine and too pure. For their aim has constantly 
been to rescue their country; their struggle has lasted nearly 
three hundred years ; their morality has ever been directed by the 
sweetest religion. Extreme cases of oppression such as theirs 
may have occasionally given rise to violent outbreaks inevitable 
in human despair ; but, on the whole, it may to their honor be 
fearlessly said, that they have preserved, almost throughout, a 
due regard for social hierarchy and all kinds of rights. Many of 
them have died of hunger, rather than touch the property of a 
rich and hostile neighbor. Where else can we find such an ex- 
ample ? 

This union of the people, which was thus brought about by 
religious persecution, included not only the natives of the old 
race, but the Anglo-Irish themselves, who were brought by de- 
grees to a unanimity of feeling which they had never known be- 
fore, although they had previously adopted Irish manners — a 
unanimity which the Lutheran Archbishop Browne had foreseen 
and openly denounced beforehand. This was the man who had 
unwittingly borne testimony to the Irish that " the common peo- 
ple of this isle are more zealous in their blindness than the saints 
and martyrs were in the truth at the beginning of the Gospel ; " 
the same George Browne, of Dublin, had also been the first to 
perceive that the religious question was beginning, even under 
Henry YIII., to unite the native Irish and the descendants of 
Strongbow's followers, until that time bitterly opposed to each 
other. 

In a letter, dated " Dublin, May, 1538," to the Lord Privy 
Seal, he said : " It is observed that, ever since his Highness's an- 
cestors had this nation in possession, the old natives have been 
craving foreign powers to assist and raise them ; and now both 
English race and Irish begin to oppose your lordship's orders" 
(about supremacy), " and do lay aside their national old quarrels, 
which, I fear, if any thing will cause a foreigner to invade this 
nation, that will." 
13 



194 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

This man, wlio was altogether worldly and withont faitli, dis- 
played in this a keen political foresight far above that of the 
ordinary counsellors of England's king. He openly announced 
what actually came to pass only toward rhe middle of Elizabeth's 
reign, and what the horrors of the Cromwellian wars were to 
complete — the thorough fusion of Irish and Anglo-l^orman Cath- 
olics, both transplanted to Connaught, perishing under the sword 
of the soldier, the rope of the hangman, or dying of starvation 
in the recesses of their mountains — united forever in the bonds 
of martyrdom. 

The " birth of the Irish people " was to be insured by an- 
other measure of the English Government — the suppression of 
religious houses. We must, in conclusion, turn to this. 

In the annals of the Eour Masters, under the year 1537, we 
read : " A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the 
effect of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the preva- 
lence of a variety of scientific and ^hilosojyMcal sjpeculations^ so 
that the people of England went into opposition to the Pope and 
to Rome. 

" At the same time, they followed a variety of opinions ; and, 
adopting the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish 
people, they gave the title of Head of the Church of God, dur- 
ing his reign, to the king. They ruined the orders who were 
permitted to hold worldly possessions, namely, monks, canons 
regular, nuns, and Brethren of the Cross, etc. . . . They broke 
into the monasteries, they sold their roofs and bells ; so that 
there was not a monastery from Arran of the Saints to the Iccian 
Sea that was not broken and scattered, except only a few in Ire- 
land." 

And, under 1540, they say : " The English, in every place 
throughout Ireland, where they established their poiver, perse- 
cuted and banished the nine religious orders, and particularly 
they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, and beheaded the 
guardian and a number of friars." 

We may add that, at the restoration of the old faith under 
Queen Mary, nothing had to be restored in Ireland save the 
monasteries. These establishments had, almost without excep- 
tion, been ruthlessly destroyed. 

In our previous considerations, we have spoken of no other 
religious houses in Ireland, save those of the old Columbian order 
of monks, as it was called, which was a growth of the country, and 
bore so many marks of Irish peculiarities. This continued until, 
communications with Rome becoming more frequent, the various 
orders established in the West were successively introduced into 
Ireland. Our purpose is not to write a history of monasticisra, 
and therefore we do not intend entering into details on this 
point, interesting though they are. But we may add that, gradu- 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 195 

ally, the old monasteries — from tlie l^orman invasion chiefly — as 
well as the new ones which were established, were placed under 
the rule of the various congregations, acknowledged by the Holy 
See. It seems that the monasteries founded by St. Columba him- 
self afterward submitted to the rule of St, Benedict, the others, 
for the most part, embracing that of the canons regular of St. Au- 
gustine ; but the precise epoch of these changes is not known. It 
is certain, however, that the Benedictines, Cisterciatis, and Ber- 
nardines, were introduced into the country at a very early date, 
together with the four mendicant orders of Franciscans, Domini- 
cans, Carmelites, and Augustinians. 

The pretext for their destruction was, of course, the same in 
England as in all the other countries of Europe— their need of 
reformation ; but it does not appear that even this pretence was 
put forward in the case of the Irish monasteries. The fact was, 
the breath of suspicion could not rest upon those stainless estab- 
lishments in the Isle of Saints. In the idea of the natives, their 
very names had ever been synonymous with holiness and all 
Christian virtues, and so they continued to enjoy the most un- 
bounded popularity. The fact of the English Government select- 
ing them as a special point of attack is in itself sufficient to vin- 
dicate their character from any aspersion. Two measures were 
deemed necessary and sufficient for the purpose of detaching Ire- 
land from its allegiance to the Holy See, and of introducing 
schism, if not heresy, into the country. One, and certainly the 
most efficacious of these, was thought to be the destruction of 
convents for both sexes. This, we affirm, is ample apology for 
their inmates. 

But this general reflection is not enough for our purpose, 
which is, to delineate and bring out the true character of the 
nation. It is, therefore, fitting to give an idea of the extent to 
which the monastic influence prevailed, and of the nature of the 
peo]3le who cherished, loved, and accepted it at all times. 

It may be said that the Christian Church, as established in 
the island by St. Patrick, rested mainly for its support on the 
religious orders. In many cases the abbots of monasteries were 
superior to bishops, and, as a general rule, the hierarchy of the 
Church was, as it were, subordinate to monastic establishments.^ 
At the time we speak of, indeed, such was no longer the case ; 
but the previously-existing state of reciprocal subordination 
between abbots and bishops during several centuries, in Ireland, 
had left deep traces in the nature of the institutions and of the 
people itself. It may be said that in the mind of an Irishman 
the existence of Christianity almost presupposed a numerous 
array of convents and religious houses. And this idea of theirs 

' Vide Montalembert's " Monks of the West : Bollandists, Oct.," tome xii., p. 888. 



196 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

can scarcely be called a wrong one, nor did tliey exaggerate tlie 
value of religious orders, since their estimate of tliem was no 
higher than tliat of Christ himself and his Church. 

If with justice it was said that the French monarchy was 
established by bishops, with equal justice may it be said that the 
Irish people had been educated, nay, created by monks. The 
monks had taken the place left vacant by the Druids, and thus 
they became for the Christian what the others had been for the 
pagan Irish. For a long period the Irish monks formed a very 
considerable portion of the population. In their body were con- 
centrated the gifts of science, art, holiness, even miracles without 
number, unless we are to suppose that the hagiography of the 
island was intrusted to the care of idiots incapable of ascertaining 
current facts. The vast literature of the island, greater indeed 
than that of any other Christian country at the time, was either 
the product of monastic intellect and learning, or at least had 
been translated and preserved by monks. The gifted Eugene 
O' Curry could fill numbers of the pages of his great work with 
the bare titles of the books which are known to have issued from 
the Irish monasteries, of which but a few fragments remain ; and 
no sensible man who has read his book can affect to despise 
establishments which could produce so many proofs of fancy, 
intellect, and erudition. The scattered fragments of that rich 
literature, which had escaped the fury of the Scandinavian, the 
ignorance and rapacity of the early Anglo-l^Torman, the blind 
fanaticism of the Puritan, could still in the seventeenth century 
furnish materials enough for the immense compilations of the 
Four Masters, Ward, Wadding, Lynch, and Colgan. 

What we have here stated is the simple, unvarnished truth ; 
yet it is but yesterday that the subject has really begun to be 
studied. 

But what is chiefly worthy our attention is, that the monas- 
teries were not only the seats of learning and literature in Ire- 
land, but they constituted and comprised in themselves every 
thing of value which the nation possessed. As they were found 
everywhere, there was not room for much else in the department 
they filled in the island. Take them away, and the country is a 
blank. So well were the crafty counsellors of Henry YIII. and 
Elizabeth satisfied of this, that they insisted on the destruction of 
the monasteries, and turned all their efforts to carry their purpose 
into effect. 

Feudalism had failed in its endeavor to cover the country 
with castles ; the native royalty and inferior chieftainship being 
engaged in constant bickerings with each other and with the 
common foe, had been unable to enrich the country with monu- 
ments of art and wealthy palaces ; the Church alone had accom- 
plished whatever had been effected in this way, and in the 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 197 

Cliiircli the monks rather than the bishops had for a long time 
exercised the preponderating influence. Hence, it may be truly 
said that Ireland was essentially a monastic country, more so 
than any other nation of Christendom. 

This fact explains how it happened that the monastic institu- 
tions could not be destroyed. The convent-walls might be bat- 
tered down, the more valuable edifices might be converted into 
dwellings for the new Protestant aristocracy, their property 
might go to enrich upstarts, and feed the rapacity of greedy con- 
querors, but the institution itself could not perish. 

It is true that in all Catholic countries this seems also to be 
the case ; but wide is the difierence with regard to Ireland. In 
all places religious establishments have frequently been the 
object of anti-Christian fury and rage. They have often been 
destroyed, and seem to have utterly disappeared, when the world 
has been surprised by their speedy resurrection. The fact is, 
the Church needs them, and the practice of evangelical counsels 
must forever be in a state of active operation upon earth, since 
the grace of God always inspires with it a number of select souls. 
God is the source ; consequently the stream must flow, since the 
life-spring is eternal and ever-running. 

But in other countries besides the one under our consideration 
religious houses and institutions have sometimes been effectually 
rooted out, at least for a time. When the French Constituent As- 
sembly, by one of its destructive decrees, closed those establish- 
ments all over France, such of them as by their laxity deserved to 
die, ceased at once to exist, and poured forth their inmates to swell 
the ranks of a corrupt society, and add religious degradation to 
the immoral filth of the world. Those religious houses, within 
whose walls the spirit of God had not ceased to dwell, were 
indeed closed and emptied ; but their inmates endeavored to live 
their lives of religion in some unknown and obscure spot, until 
the madness of the Convention, and the Reign of Terror which 
soon followed, rendered the continuation of the holy exercises of 
any community absolutely impossible. But mark this well : 
the holy aims of the monks and nuns found no response in the 
nation, and, finding themselves almost entirely rejected by a 
faithless people, with no resting-place in the whole extent of the 
country, a sudden and total interruption of religious ascetic life 
in the once most Catholic nation of Europe was the result. 

The same may soon come to pass in our days in Italy and 
Spain, until better times return to those now distracted coun- 
tries, and the extremities of evil bring them back to something 
of their primitive faith. 

ISTot so in Ireland : the communities could continue to exist 
even when turned out-of-doors, because the nation wanted them, 
and could afford them asylum and peace in the worst periods of 



198 BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 

persecution. And this great fact of tlie mutual love between 
monks, priests, and people, contributed also in no small degree 
to that union among all, whicli hencefortli became the cbarac- 
teristic feature of a people hitherto split up into hostile clans. 
I^othing probably tended so much toward effecting the birth of 
the nation as the deep attachment existing between the Irish and 
their religious orders. The latter had always preached j^eace 
and often reconciled enemies, and brought furious men to the 
practice of Christian charity and forbearance. 

We have seen instances of this when the clans were all pow- 
erful and the chieftains thought of nothing but of "preyings," as 
they called them, compelling their enemies to give " hostages " and 
devastating the territories of hostile clans. Then the voice of 
the monk came to be heard in the midst of contending passions, 
and real miracles were often performed by them in changing 
into lambs men who resembled roaring lions or devouring wolves ; 
but their action became much more efficacious when nothing 
was left to the people save their religion and the "friars." 
These, it is true, could no longer reside within the walls of their 
convents, but on that very account their life became more truly 
one with that of the people. 

Sometimes they found refuge in the large, hospitable dwell- 
ings of the native nobility, where, during the latter part of the 
reign of Henry YIII. and the whole of that of Elizabeth, the al- 
most independent power of the chieftains could still afford them 
succor. Sometimes also the humbler dwelling of the farmer or 
the peasant offered them a sure asylum, Avherein they could j)rac- 
tise their ministry in almost perfect freedom, owing to the sure 
and inviolable secrecy of the inmates and neighbors. For a great 
distance around, the Catholics knew of their abode, were often 
visited by them, even without much danger of the fact becom- 
ing known to spies and informers. And this brings naturally 
before us a new feature of the Irish character. 

Their nature, which was so expansive and passionate on all 
other subjects, so that to keep a secret was an impossible feat to 
them, wore another character when danger to their religion or 
its ministers required of them to set a seal on their lips. For 
years frequently, large numbers of priests and religious could not 
only exist, but move and work among them, without their place 
of abode becoming known to the swarms of enemies who sur- 
rounded them. The nation was trained to prudence and dis- 
cretion by centuries of oppression and tyranny. Many facts of 
this nature are known and recorded in the dark annals of those 
times ; but how many more will be known never ! 

Thus, in the year 1588, during the worst part of Elizabeth's 
reign, " John O'Malloy, Cornelius Dogherty, and Walfried Fer- 
rall, of the order of St. Francis, fell finally'victims to the malice 



BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 199 

of tlie heretics. They had spent eight years in administering the 
consolations of religion thronghont the mountainous districts of 
Leinster. Many families of Carlo w, Wichlow, and Wexford, 
had been compelled to take a refuge in the mountains from the 
fury of the English troops. The good Franciscans shared in all 
their perils, travelling about from place to place, by night ; they 
visited the sick, consoled the dying, and offered up the sacred 
mysteries for all. Oftentimes the hard rock was their only bed ; 
but they willingly embraced nakedness, and hunger, and cold, 
to console their afflicted brethren.-' — {Moran^s Archbishops of 
Dublin.) 

In these few words, we have a picture of the mountain mon- 
astery. During those eight years, how many Irish were consoled 
and comforted by those few laborers, who, driven from their holy 
home, had chosen to live in the wilderness, and practise their 
rule among the wandering people of three large counties, re- 
ceiving in return the substance, the love, and loving secrecy of 
their lock ! We have only to figure to ourselves this scene, or 
similar, repeated in every corner of the land, and we may then 
easily understand how the Irish people were brought to the 
unanimous resolve of standing by each other, and how, from 
the state of complete division which formerly prevailed, the 
elements of a compact, solid, and indestructible body, began to 
form. 

We attribute this " birth of a nation " to Henry YIII., be- 
cause the change which he tried to introduce into the religion of 
the island constituted the occasion and origin of it ; and, although 
his reign never witnessed that perfect union of the people which 
came later on, nevertheless, it is true that then it surely began, 
and its origin was the attempt to establish his spiritual suprem- 
acy in Ireland. 

This feeling of union and strength in love went on growing, 
and showed itself more and more, during the two centuries which 
followed, when so many scenes similar to the one described were 
enacted in the remotest parts of the island. God, in his mercy, 
provided it with many high mountains, difficult of access, whose 
paths were known only to the natives. In these fastnesses, the 
holy men, who had been driven from their dwellings and their 
churches, could rest in peace and attend to the duties of their 
office. They could even recruit their shattered forces, admit 
novices, and train them up ; and thus their rule continued to be 
observed, and their existence as a body protracted, long after 
their enemies imagined that they had perished utterly. As soon 
as quiet was restored, when persecution abated, and breathing- 
time was given them, so that they could show themselves, with 
some safety, more openly, they visited their old abodes, often 
found some portions of the ruins which admitted of repair, and 



200 BIRTH OF A PEOPLE. 

dwelt again in security where tlieir predecessors had dwelt for 
centuries. 

The peasant's hut would also often afford them shelter ; some 
solitary farm-house on the borders of a lake, or near a deep morass, 
took the name of their monastery ; some cranogue in the lake, or 
dry spot in the thick of the morass, which they could reach by 
paths known to themselves only, was their asylum in times of 
extraordinary danger. In ordinary times, the farm-house, to 
which they had given the name of their lost monastery, was their 
convent. It was thus the brothers O'Cleary, and their compan- 
ions, lived for years, editing the work of the " Foul* Masters," 
until, at length, they succeeded in publishing their extraordi- 
nary " Annals. " The manuscripts which, in spite of the raging 
persecution, and the "penal laws," they traversed the whole 
island to collect, were preserved, with a reverend care, in a poor 
Irish hut. Literary treasures which have since unfortunately 
perished, but which they saved for a time from the reach of the 
enemy, and which they perpetuated by having them printed, 
filled the poor presses and the old furniture of their asylum, and, 
owing purely to the friendly help of those who had given them 
shelter, they were enabled to enrich the world with their marvel- 
lous compilation. 

From the mountain and the hut, on the river-side, the monks 
were sometimes allowed to move to their former dwellings, at 
the risk, nevertheless, of their liberty and lives. What their an- 
cestors had done during the Scandinavian invasions, when the 
monasteries were so often destroyed and rebuilt, that did the 
monks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries likewise in 
many parts of the island. 

Thus, Father Mooney, a Franciscan, relates that his monas- 
tery — that of Multifarnham — having been totally destroyed by 
Sir Francis Shean, and many monks having been killed, he, with 
a few others, after long and extraordinary adventures, came back 
to the spot, then abandoned by the enemy, and " before the feast 
of the Nativity of our Lord, we built up a little house on the site 
of the monastery, and there we dwelt who were left after the 

flight Afterward, Father Nehemias Gregan, the father 

guardian, began to build a church, and to repair the monastery, 
and for this purpose caused much wood to be cut in the terri- 
tory of Deabhna McLochlain ; and when they -had roofed a 
chapel and some other buildings, there came the soldiers of 
another Sir Francis Kingtia, and they Iburned down the mon- 
astery again, and carried off some of the brethren caj)tive to 
Dublin." 

This convent of Multifarnham was raised a third time ; and, 
in fact, remained in possession of the Franciscans throughout the 
persecution, so that to this day the old church has been restored 



BIKTH OF A PEOPLE. 201 

by tliem, and the modern house, which now forms their convent, 
is built on the site of the old monastery. 

Such for a long time was the case with many other religious 
establishments ; for the same Father Mooney, writing as late as 
1624, says : " When Queen Elizabeth strove to make all Ireland 
fall away from the Catholic faith, and a law was passed proscrib- 
ing all the members of the religious orders, and giving their 
monasteries and possessions to the treasur}^, while all the others 
took to flight, or at least quitted their houses, and, for safety' 
sake, lived privately and singly among their friends, and receiv- 
ing no novices, the order of St. Francis alone ever remained, as 
it were, unshaken. For, though they Avere violently driven out 
of some convents to the great towns, and the convents were pro- 
fanely turned into dwellings for seculars, and some of the fathers 
suffered violence, and even death ; yet, in the country and other 
remote places, they ever remained in the convents, celebrating 
the divine office according to the custom of religions, their 
preachers preaching to the people and performing their other 
functions, training up novices and preserving the conventual 
buildings, holding it sinful to lay aside, or even hide, their reli- 
gious habit, though for an hour, through any human fear. And, 
every three years, they held their regular provincial chapters in 
the woods of the neighborhood, and observed the rule as it is 
kept in provinces that are m peace." 

Thus, when the Cromwellian persecution began, the religious 
orders were again flourishing in Ireland. They had obtained 
from the Stuarts some relaxation in the execution of the laws, 
and, as all at the time were fighting for Charles I. against the 
Parliamentarians, it was only natural that the authorities did not 
carry out the barbarous laws to their full extent in the island. 

It is no matter of great surprise, therefore, that, in 1611, 
more than one hundred years after the decree of Henry YIIL, 
the Franciscan order still possessed sixty-two flourishing houses 
in Ireland, each with a numerous community, besides ten con- 
vents of nuns of the order of St. Clare. The acts of the General 
Chapter of the Dominicans, held in Eome in 1656, referring to 
the same persecution of Cromwell, state that, when it began, 
there were forty-three convents of the order, containing about 
six hundi'ed inmates, of whom only one-fourth survived the 
calamity. The Jesuits were eighty in number, in 1611, of whom 
only seventeen remained when the storm had passed away. 
From a petition presented to the Sacred Congregation, in 1651, 
we learn that all the Capuchins had been banished, except a few 
who remained on the island, where they lived as " shepherds," 
" herdsmen," or " tillers of the soil." 

All the decrees of the Parliaments of Henry YIII. and Eliza- 
beth had not succeeded, in the space of a century, in destroying 



202 BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 

monasticism ; the Cromwellian war alone seemed to have done 
so, as it left the entire nation almost at the last gasp, on the 
verge of annihilation. ISTevertheless, a few years saw the orders 
again revive and prepare to start their holy work anew. Henry 
YIII. then, and his vicar, Cromwell, deceived themselves in 
thinking that they had pnt an end to monasticism in the laiid 
which had been the cradle of ^o many families of religious. 
They succeeded only in intensifying the determination of Irish- 
men not to allow their nationality to be absorbed in that of Eng- 
land. If any thing was calculated to nourish and keep alive that 
sentiment in theii- hearts, it was their daily communing with the 
holy men who shared their distress, their mountain-retreats, their 
poverty in the bogs, their wretchedness in the woods and glens. 
If monasticism had created and nurtured the nation on its first 
becoming Christian, it gave to the people a second birth holier 
than the first, because consecrated by martyrdom. Henceforth, 
divided clans and antagonistic septs were to be unknown among 
them : only Catholic Irishmen were to remain ranked around 
the successors of " the saints " of old, all determined to be what 
they were, or die. But as laws, edicts, and measures of fanatic 
frenzy cannot destroy a nation, the new people was destined to 
survive for better and brighter days. 

We have anticipated the course of events somewhat, in order 
to pass in review the chief facts connected with the designs of 
the English Government upon the religious orders. These few 
words will suffice to give the reader an idea of the new character 
which such events impressed upon the Irish nation. Everyday 
saw it more compact ; every day the resolve to fight to the death 
for God's cause, grew stronger ; the old occasions of division 
grew less and less, and that unanimity, which suffering for a 
noble cause naturalfy gives rise to in the human heart, showed 
itself more and more. A nation, in truth, was being born in the 
throes of a wide-spread and long-continued calamity ; but long 
ages were in store in times to come to reward it for the misfor- 
tunes of the past. 

It is a remarkable thing that, when England, through fear of 
civil war, was compelled to grant Catholic emancipation in 1S29, 
when Irish agitators succeeded in wrenching it from the enemy, 
and obtaining it, not only for themselves, but likewise for their 
English Catholic brethren, the British statesmen, who finally con- 
sented to such a tardy measure of justice, steadily i-efused, never- 
theless, to extend the boon to the religious orders. These re- 
mained under the ban, and so they remain still. The "penal 
laws " were never repealed for them, and, even to this day, they 
are, according to law, strictly prohibited from " receiving nov- 
ices" under all the barbarous penalties formerly enacted and 
never abrogated. 



BIETH OF A PEOPLE. 203 

But tlie nation has constantly considered this exception as 
not to be taken into account. The religions orders now existing 
are under the protection of the people, and England has never 
dared to use even a threat against the open violation of these 
" laws." Dr. Madden, in his interesting work on " Penal Laws," 
gives prominence to this fact by warmly taking up the old theme 
of thorough-going Irish Catholicity, by asserting, with force, that 
" religious orders are necessary to the Church," and that to deny 
their right to exist, even though it be only on paper in the stat- 
ute-book, is none the less an outrage against so thoroughly 
Catholic a nation as the Irish. 

The only fact which appears to clash with our reflections is 
the one well ascertained and mentioned by us, that some native 
Irish lords occujDied certain monasteries and took their share in 
the sacrilegious plunder. But a few chieftains cannot be said to 
constitute the nation, and doubtless many of those who yielded 
to the temptation, listened later to the reproving voice of their 
conscience, as in the following case, given by Miles O'Reilly, in 
his " Irish Martyrs : " 

" Gelasius O'Cullenan, born of a noble family in Connaught 
. . . joined the Cistercian order. Having completed his studies 
in Paris, the monastery of Boyle was destined as the field of his 
labors. On his arrival in Ireland, he found that the monastery, 
with its property, had been seized on by one of the neighboring 
gentry, who was sheltered in his usurpation by the edict of 
Elizabeth. The abbot . . . went boldly to the usurping noble- 
man, admonishing him of the guilt he had incurred, and the 
malediction of Heaven, which he would assuredly draw down 
upon his family. Moved by his exhortations, the nobleman re- 
stored to him the full possession of the monastery and lands ; 
and, some time after, contemplating the holy life of its inmates, 
. . . he, too, renounced the world and joined the religious insti- 
tute." 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE IRISH AND THE TDDOES. — ELIZABETH. THE UNDAUNTED 

NOBILITY. THE SUFFEEING CHUECH. 

On January 12, 1559, in the second year of tlie reign of 
Elizabeth, a Parliament was convened in Dublin to pass the Act 
of Supremacy ; that is to say, to establish Lutheranism in Ire- 
land, as had already been done in England, under the garb of 
Episcopalianism . 

But the attempt was fated to encounter a more determined 
opj)osition in Dublin than it had in London. 

Sir James Ware says, in reference to it : " At the very begin- 
ning of this Parliament, her Majestie's well-wishers found that 
most of the nobility and Commons — they were all English by 
blood or birth — were divided in opinion about the ecclesiastical 
government, which caused the Earl of Sussex (Lord Deputy) to 
dissolve t?iem, and to go over to England to confer with her Ma- 
jesty about the affairs of this kingdom. 

" These differences were occasioned by the several alterations 
which had happened in ecclesiastical matters within the compass 
of twelve years. 

" 1. King Henry YIIL held the ecclesiastical supremacy with 
the first-fruits and tenths, maintaining the seven sacraments, 
with obits and mass for the living and the dead. 

" 2. King Edward abolished the mass, authorizing the book 
of common prayers, and the consecration of the bread and wine 
in the English tongue, and establishing only two sacraments. 

" 3. Queen Mary, after King Edward's decease, brought all 
back again to the Church of Pome, and the papal obedience. 

" 4. Queen Elizabeth, on her first Parliament in England^ 
took away the Pope's supremacy, reserving the tenths and first- 
fruits to her heirs and successors. She put down the mass, and, 
for a general uniformity of worship in her dominions, as well in 
England as in Ireland, she established the book of common pray- 
ers, and forbade the use of popish ceremonies." 

Such is the very lucid sketch furnished by "Ware of the 



THE SUFFERIKG CHUECH. 205 

changes wliicli had taken place in religion in England within the 
brief space of twelve years. 

The members of the Irish Parliament, although of English 
descent, could not so easily reconcile themselves to these rapid 
changes as their fellows in England had done ; in fact, they laid 
claim to a conscience — a thing seemingly unknown to the Eng- 
lish members, or, if known at all, of an exceedingly elastic and 
slippery nature. Here lay the difficulty : how was it to be over- 
come ? The conversation between Elizabeth and Sussex must 
have been of a very interesting character. 

Returning with private instructions from the queen, the Earl 
of Sussex again convened the Parliament, which only consisted 
of the so-called representatives of ten counties — Dublin, Meath, 
"West Meath, Louth, Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, TVaterford, Tip- 
perary, and Wexford. We see that the almost total extinction 
of the Kildare branch of the Geraldines had extended the Eng- 
lish Pale. The other deputies were citizens and burgesses of 
those towns in which the royal authority predominated. " With 
such an assembly," says Leland, " it is little wonder that, in de- 
spite of clamor and opposition, in a session of a few weeks, the 
whole ecclesiastical system of Queen Mary was entirely re- 
versed." It is needless to remark that the people had nothing 
whatever to do with this reversal ; it merely looked on, or was 
already organizing for resistance. 

Nevertheless, even in that assembly the queen's agents were 
obliged to have recourse to fraud and deception, in order to 
carry her measures, and it cannot be said that they obtained a 
majority. 

" The proceedings," according to Mr. Haverty, " are involved 
in mystery, and the principal measures are believed to have been 
carried by means fraudulent and clandestine." And, in a note, 
he adds : " It is said that the Earl of Sussex, to calm the protests 
which were made in Parliament, when it was found that the law 
had been passed by a few members assembled privately, pledged 
himself solemnly that this statute would not be enforced gener- 
ally on laymen during the reign of Elizabeth." ' 

Whatever the means adopted to introduce and carry out the 
new policy, it was certainly enacted that "the queen was the 
head of the Church of Ireland, the reformed worship was rees- 
tablished as under Edward YL, and the book of common pray- 
ers, with further alterations, was reintroduced. A fine of twelve 
pence was imposed on every person who should not attend the 
new service, for each oifence ; bishops were to be appointed only 
by the queen, and consecrated at her bidding. All ofiicers and 

^ Dr. Curry, in his " Civil Wars," ha3 collected some curious facts in illustration 
of this point. 



206 THE SUFFERING CHURCH. 

ministers, ecclesiastical or lay, were bound to take the oath of 
supremacy, under pain of forfeiture or incapacity ; and any one 
who maintained the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was to for- 
feit, for his first offence, all his estates, real and personal, or be 
imprisoned for one year, if not worth twenty pounds ; for the 
second offence, to be liable to prsemunii-e; and for the third, 
to be guilty of high-treason." 

It was understood that those laws would be strictly enforced 
against all priests and friars, though left generally inoperative 
for lay people ; and, with certain exceptions, mentioned by Dr. 
Curry, such was the rule observed. Thus, the reign of Elizabeth, 
which was such a cruel one for ecclesiastics, produced few mar- 
tyrs among the laity in Ireland. And, for this reason, Sir James 
Ware is able to boast that, in all the "rebellions" of the Irish 
against Elizabeth, they falsely complained that their freedom of 
worship was curtailed, as though they could worship without 
either priests or churches. 

But the law was passed which made it " high-treason " to 
assert, three times in succession, the spiritual supremacy of the 
Pope ; and, henceforth, whoever should suffer in defence of that 
Catholic dogma, was to be a traitor and not a martyr. 

The woman, seated on the English throne, speedily discov- 
ered that it was not so easy a matter to change the religion of 
the Irish as it had been to subvert completely tbat of her own 
peo23le. 

Deprived of religious houses and means of instruction, de- 
prived of priests and churches, no communication with Pome 
save by stealth, the Irish still showed their oppressors that their 
consciences were free, and that no acts of Parliament or sen- 
tences of iniquitous tribunals could prevent their remaining 
Catholics. 

By promising to deal as lightly with the laity as severely 
with the clergy, Elizabeth felt confident that the Catholic reli- 
gion would soon perish in Ireland, and that, with the disappear- 
ance of the priests, the churches, sacraments, instruction, and 
open communion with Pome, would also disappear. To all 
seeming, her surmises were correct ; but the people were silently 
gathering and uniting together as they had never done before. 

The whole of Elizabeth's Irish policy may be comprised un- 
der two headings : 1. Her policy toward the nobles, apparently 
one of compromise and toleration, but really one of destruction, 
and so rightly did they understand it that they rose and called 
in foreign aid to their assistance ; 2. Her church policy, one of 
blood and total overthrow, which priests and people, now united 
forever in the same great cause, resisted from the outset, and 
finally defeated ; and the decrees of high-treason, which were 
carried out with frightful barbarity, only served to confirm the 



THE SUFFEEING CHURCH. 207 

Irish people in tliat imanimity wliicli the wily dealings of Henry 
YIII. had originated. 

I. "With the nobility Elizabeth hoped to succeed by flattery, 
cunning, deceit, finally by treachery, and sowing dissension 
among them ; but all her efforts only served to knit them more 
firmly one to another, and to revive among them the true spirit 
of nationality and patriotism. 

She did not state to them that her great object was to destroy 
the Catholic Church ; neverthless they should have felt and re- 
sented it from the beginning ; above all, ought they to have given 
expression to the contempt they entertained for the bait held out 
to them that the "laws" would not be executed against them, 
but against Churchmen only. Had they been truly animated 
by the feelings which already possessed the hearts of the people, 
they would have scornfuly rejected the compromise proposed. 

But she appeared to allow them perfect freedom in religious 
matters ; she subjected them to no oath, as in England ; the new 
laws were a dead letter as far as regarded the native lords, who, 
lived under other laws and remained silent, as with the lords of 
the Pale. Yet nothing was of such importance in her eyes as 
the enforcement of those decrees ; consequently, she could only 
accomplish her designs by deceit. George Browne, the first 
Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, had predicted that the old 
Irish race and the Anglo-Irish chieftains would unite and com- 
bine with Continental powers in order to establish their inde- 
pendence. The whole policy of Elizabeth!s reign would give us 
reason to believe that she rightly understood the deep remark of 
the worldly heretic. Hence, although (or, rather, because) the 
north, Ulster, was at that time the stronghold of Catholic feel- 
ing, and the O'lSTeills and O'Donnells its leaders, she flatters 
them, has them brought to her court, pardons several " rebel- 
lions " of Shane the Proud, and afterward loads with her favors 
the young Hugh of Tyrone, whom she kept at her own court. 
She would dazzle them by the splendor of that court, by the 
royal presents she so royally lavishes upon them, and by the 
prospect of greater favors still to come. Meanwhile on the 
south she turns a stern eye, and makes up her mind to destroy 
what is left of the Geraldine family. This was to be the begin- 
ning of the war of extermination, and the nobility which at the 
time was disunited became firmly consolidated shortly after. 

It is needless to go into the glorious and romantic history of 
the Geraldine family. Elizabeth chose them for the first object 
of her attack, because they, as Anglo-Irish Catholics, were more 
odious in her eye than the pure Irish. 

She knew that the then Earl of Desmond had escaped almost 
by miracle from the island with his younger brother John, when 
the rest of the noble stock had been butchered at Tyburn. She 



208 THE SUFFERmG CHURCH. 

knew that Gerald, after many wanderings, liad finally reached 
Rome, been educated under the care of his kinsman, Cardinal 
Pole, cherished as a dear son by the reigning Pontiff, had subse- 
quently appeared at the Tuscan court of Cosmo de Medici ; that 
consequently, since his return to Ireland, he might be considered 
the chief of the Catholic party there, although, to save himself 
from attainder and hold possession of his immense wealth in 
Munster, he displayed the greatest reserve in all his actions, ap- 
peared to respect the orders of the queen in all things, even in 
her external policy against the Church ; so that if priests were 
entertained in his castles, it was always by stealth, and they were 
compelled to lead a life of total retirement. 

But, despite all this outward show, Elizabeth knew that Ger- 
ald was really a sincere Catholic, that he considered himself a 
sovereign prince, and would consequently have small scruple 
about entering into a league against her, not only with the 
northern Irish chieftains, but even with the Catholic princes of 
the Continent. She resolved, therefore, to destroy him. 

Sidney was sent to Ireland as lord-lieutenant. He travelled 
first through all Munster, and complained bitterly that the Irish 
chieftains were destroying the country by their divisions^ though 
perfectly conscious that those divisions wei'e secretly encouraged 
by England. He appeared to listen to the people, when they com- 
plained of their lords, and yet at the holding of assizes he hanged 
this same people on the flimsiest pretexts, and had them exe- 
cuted wholesale. In one of his dispatches to the home govern- 
ment, he makes complacent allusion to the countless executions 
which accompanied his triumphant progress through Munster : 
" I wrote not," he says, " the name of each particular varlet that 
has died since I arrived, as well by the ordinary course of the 
law, and the martial law, as flat fighting with them, token they 
would take food without the good-will of the giver / for I think 
it is no stuff worthy the loading of my letters with ; but I do 
assure you, the number of them is great, and so^ne of the hest, 
and the rest tremble. Eor the most part they fight for their 
dinner, and many of them lose their heads before they are served 
with supper. Down they go in every corner, and down they 
shall go, God willing." — (Sidnefs Dispatches, Br. 31.) 

This was the man who announced himself as the avenger of 
the people on their rulers. He complained chiefly of Gerald of 
Desmond, and, without any pretext, summoned him with his 
brother John, carried them prisoners to Dublin, and afterward 
sent them to the Tower of London. The shanachy of the family 
relates that then, and then only, Gerald sent a private message 
to his kinsmen and retainers, appointing his cousin James, son 
of Maurice, known as James Fitzmaurice, the head and leader in 
his fiimily during his own absence. 



THE SUFFEEING CHCKOH. 209 

" For James," says the slianacliy, " was well known for liis 
attachment to the ancient faith, no less than for his valor and 
chivalry, and gladly did the people of old Desmond I'eceive these 
commands, and inviolable was their attachment to him who was 
now their appointed chieftain." 

James began directly to organize the memorable " Geraldine 
League," upon the fortunes of which, for years, the attention of 
Christendom was fixed. 

This, the first open treaty of Irish lords with the Pope, as a 
sovereign prince, and with the King of Spain, calls for a few 
remarks on the right of the Irish to declare open war with 
England, and choose their own friends and allies, without being 
rebels. 

The English were at this very time so conscious of the weak- 
ness of their title to the sovereignty of Ireland, that they were 
continually striving to prop up their claims by the most absurd 
pretensions. 

In the posthumous act of attainder against Shane 0'I*^eill in 
the Irish Parliament of 1569, Elizabeth's ministers aftected to 
trace her title to the realm of Ireland back to a period an- 
terior to the Milesian race of kings. They invented a ridiculous 
story of a " King Gurmondus," son to the noble King Belan of 
Great Britain, who was lord of Bayon in Spain — they probably 
meant Bayonne in France — as were many of his successors down 
to the time of Henry II., who possessed the island after the 
" comeing of Irishmen into the same lande." — {Haverty, Irish 
Stahttes, 2 Eliz., sess. 3, cap. i.) 

These learned men who flourished in the golden reign of 
Elizabeth must have thought the Irish very easily imposed upon 
if they imagined they could give ear to such a fabrication, at a 
time whea each great family had its own chronicler to trace its 
pedigree back to the very source of the race of Miledh. 

The title of conquest, at that time a valid one in all countries, 
had no value with the Irish who never had been and never 
admitted themselves to have been conquered. Had they not 
preserved their own laws, customs, language, local governments ? 
Had the English ever even attempted to subject them to their 
laws ? They had openly refused to grant their pretended bene- 
fits to those few " degenerate Irishmen " who in sheer despair 
had applied for them. This policy of separation was adopted by 
England with the view of " rooting out " the Irish. The English 
Government could therefore only accept the natural consequence 
of such a system — that the Irish race should be left to itself, in 
the full enjoyment of its own laws and local governments. 

The very policy of Henry YIII. and Elizabeth, as displayed 
in their attempt to break down the clans by favoring " well-dis- 
posed Irishmen " and setting them up, by fraudulent elections, as 
14 



210 THE SUFFERING CHUECH. 

chiefs of the various septs, proves that the English themselves 
admitted the clans to be real nations — nationes — as they were 
called at the time by Irish chroniclers and by English writers 
even. It was an acknowledgment of the plain fact that the na- 
tives possessed and exercised their own laws of succession and 
election, their own government and autonomy. 

The disappearance of the Ard-Righ, who had held the titular 
power over the whole country, is no proof that the Irish pos- 
sessed no government : for they themselves had refused for sev- 
eral centuries to acknowledge his power. The island was split 
up into several small independent states, each with the right of 
levying war, and making peace and alliance. Gillapatrick, of 
Ossory, dispatched his ambassador to Henry YIII. to announce 
that if he, the English king, did not prevent his deputy, Kufus 
Pierce, of Dublin, from annoying the clans of Ossory, Gillapat- 
rick would, in self-defence, declare war against the King of Eng- 
land. And the imperious Henry Tudor, instead of laughing at 
the threat of the chieftain, was shrewd enough to recognize its 
significance, and prevented it being carried into execution by 
admitting the cause as valid, and submitting the conduct of his 
deputy to an investigation. 

Moreover, the principles by which Christendom had been 
ruled for centuries, were just then being broken up by the ad- 
vent of Protestantism ; and novel theories were being introduced 
for the government of modern nations. What were the old 
principles, and what the new ; and how stood Ireland with re- 
spect to each % 

In the old organization of Christendom, the key-stone of the 
whole political edifice was the papacy. Up to the sixteenth cen- 
tury, the Sovereign Pontifi" had been acknowledged by all 
Christian nations as supreme arbiter in international questions, 
and if England did possess any shadow of authority over Ireland, 
it was owing to former decisions of popes, who, being misin- 
formed, had allowed the Anglo-l^orman kings to establish their 
power in the island. Whatever may be thought of the bull of 
Adrian lY., this much is certain : we do not pretend to solve 
that vexed historical problem. 

But, by rebelling against Pome, by rejecting the title of the 
Pope, England threw away even that claim, and by the bull of 
excommunication, issued against Elizabeth, the Irish were re- 
leased from their allegiance to her, supposing that such allegi- 
ance had existed, solely built upon this iclaim. 

So well was this understood at the time, that the Eoman 
Pontiffs, as rulers of the Papal States, the Emperors of Ger- 
many, as heads of the German Empire, and the Kings of Spain 
and France, always covertly and sometimes openly received the 
envoys of O'Neill, Desmond, and O'Donnell, and openly dis- 



THE SUFFERING CHURCH. 211 

patched troops and fleets to assist tlie Irish in their struggle for 
their de facto independence. 

All this was in perfect accordance, not merely with the an- 
thority which Catholic powers still recognized in the Sovereign 
Pontiif, but even with the new order of things which Protestant; 
ism had introduced into Western Europe, and which England, 
as henceforth a leading Protestant power, had accepted and 
eagerly embraced. By the rejection of the supreme arbitration 
of the PojDes, on the part of the new heretics, Europe lost its 
nnity as Christendom, and naturally formed itself into two 
leagues, the Catholic and the Protestant. An oppressed Catholic 
nationality, above all a weak and powerless one, had therefore 
the right of appeal to the great Catholic powers for help against 
oppression. And the pretension of England to the possession of 
Ireland was the very essence of oppression and tyranny in itself, 
doubly aggravated by the fact of an apostate and vicious king or 
queen making it treason for a people, utterly separate and distinct 
from theirs, to hold fast to its ancient and revered religion. 

Who can say, then, that Gregory XIII. was guilty of injustice 
and of abetting rebellion when, in 1578, he furnished James Eitz- 
maurice, the great G-eraldine, with a fleet and army to fight against 
Elizabeth ? The authority greatest in Catholic eyes, and most 
Avorthy of respect in the eyes of all impartial men — the Pope — 
thus endorsed the patent fact that Ireland was an independent 
nation, and could wage war against her oppressors. Here we have 
a stand-point from which to argue the question for future times. 

The rash or, perhaps, treacherous share taken by a few Irish 
chieftains, in the schismatical and heretical as well as unpatriotic 
decrees of the Parliament of 1541, and in the subsequent ones of 
1549, could compromise the Irish nation in nowise, inasmuch 
as the people, being still even in legal enjoyment of their own 
government, their chieftains possessed no authority to decide on 
such questions without the full concurrence of their clans, and 
these had already pronounced, clearly enough and unmistakably, 
on the return of their lords from, their title-hunting expedition 
in England. 

All the chroniclers of the time agree that " the people " was 
invariably sound in faith, siding with the chieftains wherever 
they rose in opposition to oppressive decrees, abandoning them 
when they showed signs of wavering, even ; but, above all, when 
they ranged themselves with the oppressors of the Church. The 
English Protestant writers of the period confirm this honorable 
testimony of the Irish bards, by constantly accusing the natives 
of a " rebellious " spirit. 

The history of the Geraldine struggle is known to all readers 
of Irish history, and does not enter into the scope of these 
pages. We have, however, to consider the foreign aid which 



212 THE SUFFERING CHUECH. 

the cliieftains received, from Spain cliieflj, and the causes of these 
failures, which at first would seem to argue a lack of firmness on 
the part of the Irish themselves. During the Geraldine wars, 
and later on in what is called the rebellion of Hugh O'JSTeill and 
Hugh O'Donnell, the King of Spain sent vessels and troops to 
the assistance of the Irish. All these expeditions failed, and the 
destruction of the natives was far greater than it might other- 
wise have been, in consequence of the greater number of English 
troops sent to Ireland, to face the expected Spanish invasion. 

The same ill success attended the French fleet and army dis- 
patched to Limerick by Louis XIY. to assist James II., and, later 
still, the large fleet and well-appointed troopasent by the French 
Convention to the aid of the " United Irishmen," in 1798. 

In like manner, the Yendeans, on the other side, those French 
"rebels" against the Convention itself, received their death-blow 
in consequence of the English who were sent to their succor at 
Quiberon. 

It seems, indeed, a universal historic law that, when a nation 
or a party in a nation struggles against another, the almost in- 
variable consequence of foreign aid is failure; but no conclusion 
can be deduced from that fact of lack of bravery, steadfastness, 
even ultimate success, on the part of those who rise in arms 
against oppression. Of the many causes which may be assigned 
to that apparently strange law of history, the chief are : 

1. The difficulty of efiecting a joint and simultaneous eifort 
between the insurgent forces and the distant friendly power. 
Help comes either too soon or too late, or lands on a point of 
the coast where aid is worse than useless, and where it only 
throws confusion into the ranks of the struggling native forces, 
whose plans are thus all disarranged, disconcerted, and thrown 
into confusion. Add to this the dangers of the sea, the possibly 
insufficient knowledge of the soundings and of the nature of the 
coast, the differences of spirit, customs, and language, of the two 
coalescing forces, and it may be easily concluded that the chances 
of success, as opposed to those of failure, are but scanty. 

2. The forces against which the coalition is made are always 
immeasurably increased for the very purpose of meeting it, its 
purport being always known beforehand. In the case under con- 
sideration, it were easy to show that Elizabeth was prompted by 
the fear of Spain to be speedy in crushing the attempted " re- 
bellions " in the south and north. Historians have made a com- 
putation of the troops dispatched from England by the queen, 
and of the treasure spent in these expeditions during her reign, 
and the result is astonishing for the times. In fact, the whole 
strength of England was brought into requisition for the purpose 
of overpowering Ireland. 

In our own days, the successful insurrection of Greece against 



THE SUFFEEma OHUECH. 213 

Turkey seems at variance with these considerations. But tlie 
independence of the Greeks was brought about rather by the 
unanimous voice of Euroj^e coercing Turkey than by the few 
troops sent from France, or by the few English or Poles who vol- 
unteered their aid to the insurgents. 

The remarks we have made may be further corroborated by 
the reflection that the successful risings of oppressed nationalities, 
recorded in modern history, were wholly effected by the unaided 
forces of the insurgents. Thus, the seven cantons of Switzerland 
succeeded against Austria, the Venetian Kepublic against the 
barbarians of the JSTorth, the Portuguese in the Braganza revolu- 
tion against Spain, and the United Provinces of the Low Coun- 
tries against Spain and Germany. 

The only historical instance which may contravene this gen- 
eral rule is found in the Eevolution of- the United States of 
America, where the French cooperation was timely and of real 
use, chiefly because the foreign aid was placed entirely under the 
control and at the command of the supreme head of the colonists. 
General Washington. 

These few words sufiice for our purpose. 

The policy of Elizabeth toward the Irish nobility is well 
known to our 'readers. The fate of the house of Desmond was, 
in her mind, sealed from the beginning. It is now an ascer- 
tained fact that she drove the great earl into rebellion, who, for 
a long time, refused openly to avow his approbation of the con- 
federates' schemes, and even seemed at flrst to cooperate with 
the queen's forces in opposition to them. It was only after his 
cousin Fitzmaurice and his brother John had been almost ruined 
that, convinced of the determination of the English Government 
to seize and occupy Munster with his five or six millions of acres, 
he boldly stood up for his faith and his country, and perished 
in the attempt. 

It was then that "Protestant plantations" began in Ireland. 
The confiscated estates of Desmond — which, in reality, did not 
belong to him but to his tribe — ^were handed over to companies 
of " planters out of Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, 
out of Lancashire and Cheshire, organized for defence and to be 
supported by standing forces." — {Prende^rgast.) 

Then the work set on foot by Henry 11. in favor of Strong- 
bow, De Lacy, De Courcy, and others, was resumed, after an in- 
terval of four hundred years, to be carried through to the end ; 
that is to say, to the complete pauperizing of the native race. 

Among the " undertakers " and " planters " introduced into 
Munster by Elizabeth, a word may not be outof place on Ed- 
mund Spenser and "Walter Raleigh, the first a great poet, the 
second a great warrior and courtier. They both united in advo- 
cating the extermination of the native race, a policy which Henry 



214 THE SUFFEEING- OHUECH. 

YIII. was too liigh-mindecl to accept, and ElizabetL. too great a 
despiser of " the people " to notice. To Hemy and Elizabeth 
Tudor the people was nothing ; the nobility every thing. Spen- 
ser, Raleigh, and other Englishmen of note, who came into daily 
contact with the nation, saw very well that accomit should be 
taken of it, and thought, as Sir John Davies had thought before 
them, that it ought to be " rooted out." That great question of 
the Irish peojole was assuming vaster proportions every day ; the 
peo^Dle was soon to show itself in all its strength and reality, to 
be crushed out apparently by Cromwell, but really to be pre- 
served by Providence for a future age, now at hand to-day. 

Spenser and Raleigh, being gifted with keener foresight than 
most of their countrymen, were for the entire destruction of the 
people, thinking, as did many French revolutionists of our own 
days, that " only the dead never come back." 

The author of the " Faerie Queene," who had taken an active 
part in the horrible butcheries of the Geriildine war, when all 
the Irish of Munster were indiscriminately slaughtered, insists 
that a similar policy should be adopted for the whole island. In 
his work " On the State of Ireland," he asks for " large masses 
of troops to tread down all that standeth before them on foot, 
and lay on the ground all the stiff-necked people of that land." 
He m'ges that the war be carried on not only in the summer but 
in the winter ; " for then, the trees are bare and naked, which 
use both to hold and house the kerne ; the ground is cold and 
wet, which useth to be his bedding ; the air is sharp and bitter, 
to blow through his naked sides and legs ; the kine are barren 
and without milk, which useth to be his food, besides being all 
with calf (for the most part), they will through much chasing and 
driving cast all their calf, and lose all their millv, which should 
relieve him in the next summer." 

Spenser here employs his splendid imagination to present 
gloatingly such details as the most effective means for the de- 
struction of the hated race. All he demands is, that " the end 
should be very short," and he gives us an example of the effec- 
tiveness and beauty of his system "in the late wars in Mun- 
ster." For, "notwithstanding that the same" (Munster) "was a 
most rich and plentiful country, full of corne and cattle, . . . 
yet ere one yeare and a half they " (the Irish) " were brought to 
such wretchednesse as that any stony heart would have rued the 
same. Out of every corner of woods and glynnes, they came 
creeping forthe upon their hands, for their legges could not beare 
them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spoke like 
ghosts crying out of their graves .... that in short space there 
were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country 
suddenly left void of man and beast." 

Such is a picture, horribly graphic, of the state to which 



THE SUFFEEING OHUECH. 215 

Muiister had been reduced by the policy of England as carried 
out by a Gilbert, a Peter Carew, and a Cosby ; and to this pass 
the " gentle " Spenser would have wished to see the whole coun- 
try come. 

Even Mr. Froude is compelled to denounce in scathing terms 
the monsters employed by the queen, and his facts are all de- 
rived, he tells lis, from existing " state papers." 

Writing of the end of the Geraldine war, he says : " The 
English nation was at that time shuddering over the atrocities 
of the Duke of Alva. The children in the nurseries were being 
inflamed to patriotic rage and madness by the tales of Spanish 
tyranny. Yet, Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, 
defenceless, or those whose sex even dogs can recognize and re- 
spect. 

" Sir Peter Carew has been seen murdering women and chil- 
dren, and babies that had scarcely left the breast ; but Sir Peter 
Carew was not called on to answer for his conduct, and remained 
in favor with the deputy. Gilbert, who was left in command at 
Kilnallock, was illustrating yet more signally the same ten- 
dency." if or " was Gilbert a bad man. As time went on, he 
passed for a brave and chivalrous gentleman, not the least dis- 
tinguished in that high band of adventurers who carried the 
English flag into the western hemisphere .... above all, a man 
of ' special piety.' He regarded himself as dealing rather with 
savage beasts than with human beings (in Ireland), and, when 
he tracked them to their dens, he strangled the cubs, and rooted 
out the entire brood. 

" The Gilbert method of treatment has this disadvantage, 
that it must be carried out to the last extremity, or it ought not 
to be tried at all. The dead do not come back ; and if the 
mothers and babies are slaughtered with the men, the race gives 
no further trouble ; but the work must be done thoroughly ; 
partial and fitful cruelty lays up only a long debt of deserved and 
ever-deepening hate. 

"In justice to the English soldiers, however, it must be said 
that it was no fault of theirs if any Irish child of that generation 
was allowed to live to manhood." — [Hist, of Engl., vol. x., p. 50T.) 

These Munster horrors occurred directly after the defeat of 
the Irish at Kinsale. Cromwell, therefore, in the atrocities 
which will come under our notice, only followed out the policy of 
the " Virgin Queen.'' And it is but too evident that the Eng- 
lish of 1598 were the fathers or grandfathers of those of 1650. 
Both were inaugurating a system of warfare which had never 
been adopted before, even among pagans, unless by the Tartar 
troops under Genghis Khan ; a system which in future ages 
should shape the policy, which was followed, for a short time, l3y 
the French Convention in la Yendee, 



216 THE SUTFEEING CHURCH. 

Raleigh, as well as Spenser, seems to Lave been a vigorous 
advocate of this system. It is true that his sole appearance on 
the scene was on the occasion of the surrender of Smerwick by 
the Spanish garrison ; but the Saxon spirit of the man was dis- 
played in his execution of Lord Grey's orders, who, after, accord- 
ing to all the Irish accounts, promising their lives to the Span- 
iards, had them executed ; and Raleigh appears to have directed 
that execution, whereby eight hundred prisoners of war were cruel- 
ly butchered and flung over the rocks in the sea. From that time 
out the phrase " Grey's faith " {Graia fides) became a proverb 
with the Irish. 

After having succeeded in crushing Desmond and " planting" 
Munster, the attention of Elizabeth was directed to the O'lTeills 
and O'Donnells of Ulster. That thrilling history is well known. 
It is enough to say that O'Donnell from his youth was designedly 
exasperated by ill-treatment and imprisonment ; and that as soon 
as O'Neill, who had been treated with the greatest apparent 
kindness by the queen, that he might become a queen's Tnan, 
showed that he was still an Irishman and a lover of his country, 
he was marked out as a victim, and all the troops and treasures 
of England were poured out lavishly to crush him and destroy 
the royal races of the north. 

In that gigantic struggle one feature is remarkable — that, 
whenever the Eiiglish Government felt obliged to come to terms 
with the last asserters of Irish independence, the first condition 
invariably laid down by O'Keill and O'Donnell was the free 
exercise of the Catholic religion. For we must not lose sight of 
the well-ascertained fact that the English queen, who at the very 
commencement of her reign had had her spiritual supremacy ac- 
knowledged by the Irish Parliament under pain of forfeiture, 
praemunire, and high-treason, insisted all along on the binding 
obligation of this title ; and though at first she had secretly prom- 
ised that this law should not be enforced against the laity, she 
showed by all her measures that its observance was of paramount 
importance in her eyes. 

Had the Irish followed the English as a nation, and accepted 
Protestantism, Elizabeth would scarcely have made war upon 
them, nor introduced her "jDlantations." All along the Irish 
were " traitors " and " rebels " simply because they chose to re- 
main Catholics, and McGeoghegan has well remarked that, " not- 
withstanding the severe laws enacted by Henry YIII., Edward 
YL, and Elizabeth, down to James I., it is a well-established 
truth that, during that period, the number of Irishmen who em- 
braced the 'reformed religion' did not amount to sixty in a 
country which at the time contained two millions of souls.'-' 
And McGeoghegan might have added that, of these sixty, not 
one belonged to the people ; they were all native chieftains who 



THE SUFFERING CHURCH. 217 

sold their religion in order to hold their estates or receive favors 
from the queen. 

Sir James Ware is bold enough to say that, in all her dealings 
with the Irish nobility, Elizabeth never mentioned religion, and 
their right of practising it as they wished never came into the 
question. She certainly never subjected them to any oath, as 
was the case in England. Technically speaking, this statement 
seems correct. Yet it is undeniable that Elizabeth allowed no 
Catholic bishops or priests to remain in the island ; permitted the 
Irish to have none but Protestant school-teachers for their chil- 
dren ; bestowed all their churches on heretical ministers ; closed, 
one by one, all the buildings which Catholics used for their wor- 
ship, as sooii as their existence became known to the police ; in 
fact obliged them to practise Protestantism or no religion at all. 

In the eyes of EHzabeth a Catholic was a "rebel." "Whoever 
was executed for religion during her reign was executed for " re- 
bellion." The Roman emperors who persecuted the Church dur- 
the first three centuries, might have advanced the same pretences. 
And indeed the early Christians were said to be tortured and 
executed for their " violation of the laws of the empire." 

This point will come more clearly before us in considering 
the second phase of the policy of Elizabeth, her direct interfer- 
ence with the Church. 

11. If the policy of England's queen had been one of treach- 
ery and deceit toward the nobility, toward the Church it was 
avowedly one of blood and destruction. 

"Well-intentioned and otherwise well-informed writers, among 
them Mr. Prendergast, seem to consider that the main object 
of the atrocious proceedings we now proceed to glance at was 
" greed," and that the English Government merely connived at 
the covetous desires of adventurers and undertakers, who wished 
to destroy the Irish and occupy their lands ; for, as Spenser says : 
" Sure it was a most beautiful and sweete country as any under 
heaven, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, re- 
plenished with all sorts of fish most abundantly ; sprinkled with 
many very sweete islands, and goodly lakes like little inland seas ; 
adorned with goodly woods ; also full of very good ports and 
havens opening upon England as inviting us to come into them." 

Such, according to those writers, was the policy of England 
from the first landing of Strongbow on the shores of Erin, and 
even during the preceding four centuries, when both races were 
Catholic, and the conversion of the natives to Protestantism could 
not enter the thoughts of the invaders. 

This, to a certain extent, is true. Still, it seems very doubtful 
to us that Elizabeth should have undertaken so many wars in 
Ireland, which lasted through her whole reign, and on which she 
employed all the strength and resources of England, merely to 



218 THE SUFFEEING- CHUEOH. 

please a certain number of nobles wbo wished to find foreign es- 
tates wliereon to settle tlieir numerous oifspring. 

The chief importance, in her eyes, of the conquest was clearly 
to establish her spiritual superiority in that part of her domin- 
ions. She would have left the native nobles at peace, and even 
conferred on them her choicest favors, had they only consented, 
as English subjects, to break with Rome. Rome had excommu- 
nicated her ; rius Y. had released her subjects from their alle- 
giance because of her heresy, and Ireland did not reject the bull 
of the Pope. This in her eyes constituted the great and unpar- 
donable offence of the Irish. And that, for her, the whole ques- 
tion bore a religious character, will appear more clearly from her 
conduct toward the Catholic Church throughout her reign. Into 
this part of our subject the examination of the step taken by 
Pius Y. naturally enters, and, in examining it, we shall see 
whether, and how far, the Irish can be called rebels and " trai- 
tors." 

In his history of the Reformation, Dr. Heylin says of Eliza- 
beth : " She knew full well that her legitimation and the Pope's 
supremacy could not stand together, and she could not possibly 
maintain the one without discarding the other." This is perfectly 
true, and furnishes us with the key to all her church measures. 

She pretended to be a Catholic during Mary's reign ; but it 
was merely pretence. To persevere in Catholicity required of 
her the sacrifice of her political aspirations ; for the Church could 
not admit of her legitimacy, and consequently her title to the 
crown of England. Hence, upon the death of Mary Tudor, the 
Queen of Scots immediately assumed the title of Queen of 
England ; and although the Pope, then Pius lY., did not immedi- 
ately declare himself in favor of Mary Stuart, but reserved his 
decision for a future period, nevertheless, the view of the case 
adopted by the Pontiff could not be mistaken. Elizabeth's 
legitimacy, or, as Heylin has it, "legitimation and the Pope's 
supremacy could not stand together. " 'No course was left open 
to her, then, than to reject the pontifical authority, and establish 
her own in her dominions, as she did not possess faith enough to 
set her soul above a crown ; and the success of her father, 
Henry YIIL, and of her half-brother, Edward YL, encouraged 
her in this step. This fully explains her policy. It became a 
principle with her that, to accept the Pope's supremacy in sj)irit- 
uals, was to deny her legitimacy, and consequently to be guilty 
of treason against her. This made the position of Catholics in Eng- 
land and Ireland a most trying one. But their moral duty was 
clear enough, and every other obligation had to give way before 
that. In the persecution which followed they were certainly 
martyrs to their duty and their religion. 

That the question of the succession in England was an open 



THE SUFFEEING CHUEOH. 219 

one, must be admitted by every candid man. Who was the 
legitimate Queen of England at the death of Mary Tudor ? The 
Queen of Scots assumed the title, and, as the legitimate off- 
spring of the sister of Henry YIII., she had the right to it as the 
nearest direct descendant in the event of Elizabeth's pretensions 
not being admitted by the nation. The nation at the time was in 
fact, though not in right, the nobles, who enriched themselves at 
the expense of the Church, and were therefore deeply interested 
in the exclusion of Catholic principles. A Parliament composed 
of the nobles had already acknowledged Elizabeth to the exclusion 
of the Queen of Scots, and the former decision w^as reaffirmed 
as against a " female pretender " supported by a foreign power, 
namely, France. 

England, that is to say, the corrupt nobility of the kingdom, by 
taking upon itself that decision, refused to submit the question to 
the arbitration of the Pope ; and thus, for the first time, the prin- 
ciples which had guided Christendom for eight hundred years, 
were discarded. Yet, under Mary, the Catholic Church had been 
declared the Church of the state ; at her death, no change took 
place ; the mass of the people was still Catholic. It took Elizabeth 
her whole reign to make the English a thoroughly Protestant 
people. The great mass of the nation came consequently then, 
even legally, under the law of mediaeval times, which surrendered 
the decision of such cases into the hands of the Poman Pontiff. 

Again, when we reflect that our present object is the consid- 
eration of who was the legitimate Queen of Ireland, the question 
becomes clearer and simpler still. The supremacy of Henry YIII. 
had never been acknowledged in the island, even by those who 
had subscribed to the decrees of the Parliament of 1541 and 1569. 
The Irish chieftains had not only never assented, but had always 
preserved their independence in all, save the suzerainty of the 
English monarchs, and they were at the time, without exception. 
Catholics. For them, therefore, the Pope was the expounder of the 
law of succession to the throne, as, up to that time, he had been 
generally recognized in Europe^ Elizabeth, consequently, as an 
acknowledged illegitimate child, could not become a legitimate 
queen without a positive declaration and election by the true re- 
presentatives of the people, approved by the Pope. Her assump- 
tion, then, of the supreme government was a mere usurpation. 
The 4;heory of governments de facto being obeyed as quasi^Q,^\i\- 
mate had not yet been mooted among lawyers and theologians. 
With respect to the whole question, there can be no doubt as to 
the conclusion at which any able constitutional jurist of our days 
would arrive.. 

Could usurped rights such as these invest Elizabeth with 
authority to declare herself paramount not only in political but 
also in religious matters ? And, because she was called Cjueen, 



220 THE SUFFERmG CHURCH. 

can it be considered treason for an Irishman to believe in the 
spiritual supremacy of the Pope ? Yet, unless we look upon as 
martyrs those who died on the rack and the gibbet in Ireland 
during her reign, because they refused to admit in a woman the 
title of Yicar of Christ, to such decision must we come. 

The policy of the English queen toward Catholic bishops, 
priests, and monks, presents the question in a still stronger light. 
Its chief feature will now come before us, and wiU show how all 
of these suffered for Christ. "We say all, because not only those 
are included in the category who held aloof from politics and 
confined themselves to the exercise of their spiritual functions, 
but those also who, at the bidding of the Pope, or following the 
natural promptings of their own inclinations, favored the so- 
called rebellion of the Geraldine and of the Ulster chieftains. 
The lives and death of both are now well known, and to both 
we award the title of heroes and Christian martyrs. 

As it would be too long to present here a complete picture of 
those events, and trace the biography of many of those who suf- 
fered persecution at that time, we content ourselves with two 
faithful representatives of the classes above mentioned — Richard 
Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. Hurley, Archbishop of 
Cashel. The case of the great Oliver Plunkett, who suffered 
under Charles II., and who was the victim of the entire English 
nation, is beyond our present discussion. 

The biography of the first of these has been written by several 
authors, who, agreeing as to the main facts of his history, differ 
only in their chronology. Dr, Roothe's account is the longest of 
all, and is intricate, and subject to some confusion with regard to 
dates ; but a sketch of that life, which appeared in the Havibler 
of April, 1853, isthe most consistent and easily reconciled with 
the well-known facts of the general history of the period, and 
therefore we follow it : 

Richard Creagh, proposed for the See of Armagh by the 
nuncio, David Wolfe, arrived at Limerick in the August of 1560, 
at the very beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, Pius lY,, who 
was then Pontiff, had not come to any conclusion respecting the 
sovereignty of England, and did not openly declare himself in 
favor of the right of Mary Stuart to the crown. The Pope, not 
having given any positive injunctions to Archbishop Creagh, with 
regard to his political conduct, the latter was left free to follow 
the dictates of his conscience. He came only with a letter, to 
Shane dSTeill, who, at the time, was almost indej^endent in Ulster, 

!N'ot only did the archbishop not take any part in the political 
measures of the Ulster chieftain, who was often. at war with 
Elizabeth, but he soon came to a disagreement with him on 
purely conscientious grounds, and finally excommunicated him. 
In the midst of the many difficulties which surrounded him, he 



THE SUFFEEING CHURCH. - 221 

resolved to incnlcate peace and loyalty to Elizabetli throughout 
Ulster, asking of Shane only one favor, that of founding colleges 
and schools, and thinking that, by remaining loyal to the queen, 
he might obtain her assistance in founding a university. The 
good prelate little knew the character of the woman with whom 
he had to deal, imagining probably that the decree of her spirit- 
ual supremacy would remain a dead letter for the priesthood, as 
had been falsely promised to the laity. 

But he was not left long to indulge in these delusions ; for, in 
the act of celebrating mass in a monastery of his diocese, he was 
betrayed by some informer, and was arrested by a troop of sol- 
diers, who conducted him before the government authorities, by 
whom he was sent to London and confined in the Tower on Jan- 
uary 18, 1565. He was there several times interrogated by Cecil 
and the Recorder of London, who could easily ascertain that the 
prelate was altogether guiltless of political intrigue. 

He escaped miraculously, passed through Louvain, went to 
Spain, at the time at peace with England, and, wishing to return 
to L'eland, wrote, through the Spanish ambassador, to Leicester, 
then all-powerful with the queen, to protest beforehand that, if 
the Pope should order him to return to his diocese, he intended 
only to render to Csesar what is Csesar's and to God what is 
God's. Even then, after his prison experience of several months, 
he thought that, if he could persuade Elizabeth that he was truly 
loyal to her, she would forgive him his Catholicity. 

Receiving no answer, he set sail for his country, where he 
landed in August, 1566, and shortly after wrote to Sir Henry 
Sidney, then lord-de]3uty, in the very terms he had used with 
Leicester, and proposing in addition to use his efforts in inducing 
Shane O'JSTeill to conclude peace. 

"What Sidney and his masters in London, Cecil and Leicester, 
must have thought of the simplicity of this good man, it is impos- 
sible to say. They condescended to return no answer to his 
more than straightforward communication, save the short verbal 
reply concerning O'Keill : " We have given forth speach of his 
extermination by war." 

The good prelate, after having so clearly defined his position, 
thought he might safely follow the dictates of his conscience, and 
govern his flock in peace ; but he was soon taken prisoner, in 
April, 1567, by O'Shaughnessy, who received a special letter of 
thanks from Elizabeth for his services on this occasion. 

By order of the queen, he was tried in Dublin ; but, so clear was 
the case before them, that even a Protestant jury could not convict 
him. The honest Dublin jurors were therefore cast into prison 
and heavily fined, while the prelate was once again transferred to 
London, whence he a second time escaped by the connivance of 
his jailor. 



222 THE SUFFERING CHUECH. 

Eetaken in 1567, lie was handed over to the queen's officers, 
under a pledge that his life would he spared. And, in conse- 
quence of this pledge alone, was he never brought to trial, but 
kept a close prisoner in the Tower for eighteen years, until in 
1585 he was, according to all reliable accounts, deliberately poi- 
soned. 

This simple narrative certainly proves that in Elizabeth's eyes 
the mere sustaining the Pope's spiritual supremacy was trea- 
son, and every Catholic consecpently, because Catholic, a traitor 
deserving death. 

True, the Irish prelates, monks, and people, might have imi- 
tated the majority of the English nobles and people in accept- 
ing the new dogma. In that case, they would have become truly 
loyal and dutiful subjects, and been admitted to all the rights of 
citizenship ; the nobles would have retained possession of their 
estates, the gentry obtained seats in the Irish Parliament ; while 
the common people, renouncing clanship, absurd old traditions, 
the memory of their ancestors, together with their obedience to 
the See of Rome, would not have been excluded from the bene- 
lits of education ; would have been allowed to engage in trades 
and manufactures ; would have been permitted to keep their 
land, or hold it by long leases ; would have enjoyed the privi- 
lege of dwelling in walled towns and cities, if they felt no inclina- 
tion for agriculture. They would have become no doubt " a high- 
ly-prosperous " nation, as the English and Scotch of our days have 
become, partakers of all the advantages of the glorious British 
Constitution, cultivating the fields of their ancestors, and con- 
verting their beautiful island into a paradise more enchanting 
than the rich meadows and wheat-fields of England itself. 

On the other hand, they would have obtained all those tem- 
poral advantages at the expense of their faith, which no one had 
a right to take from them ; in their opinion, and in that of mill- 
ions of their fellow-Catholics, they would have forfeited their 
right to heaven, and the Irish have always been unreasonable 
enough to prefer heaven to earth. They have preferred, as the 
holy men of old of whom St. Paul speaks, "to be stoned, cut 
asunder, tempted, put to death by the sword, to wander about in 
sheep-skins, in goat-skins ; being in want, distressed, afilicted, of 
whom the world was not worthy ; wandering in deserts, in 
mountains, in dens, and in the caves of the earth, being approved 
by the testimony of faith : " that is to say, having the testimony 
of their conscience and the approval of God, and considering this 
better than worldly prosperity and earthly happiness. 

Turning now to those prelates, monks, and priests, who dur- 
ing Elizabeth's reign took part in Irish politics against the 
queen, can we on that account deny them the title of martyrs to 
their faith ? 



THE SUFFERING OHUEOH. 223 

Dr. Hurley, Arclibisliop of Casliel, wliose memoirs were pub- 
lisLed by Miles O'Eeilly, may be taken as a type of tliis class. 
Suppose, as well grounded, although never proved, the suspicion 
of the English Government with regard to his political mission. 
Prelates and priests, generally speaking, were put to death under 
Elizabeth, or confined to dungeons on mere suspicion, and, as we 
have seen in the case of the Archbishop of Armagh, even clear 
proofs of their innocence would not save them. 

On his father's side. Dr. Hurley was naturally in the interest 
of James Geraldine, Earl of Desmond ; and, on his mother's, he 
belonged to the royal family of O'Briens of Munster. Consecrated 
Archbishop of Cashel at Rome in 1580, under Gregory XIII., 
during the Geraldine rebellion, he was compelled to use the 
utmost precaution in entering Ireland. The police of Elizabeth 
was particularly active at that time in hunting up priests and 
monks throughout the whole island, but particularly in the south. 

The archbishop escaped all these dangers, and he avoided 
the certain denunciation of Walter Baal, the Mayor of Dublin' 
probably, who was then actually persecuting his mother, Dame 
Eleanor Birmingham ; he fled to the castle of Thomas Fleming, 
who concealed him in a secret chamber in his house and treated 
him as a friend. But when everybody thought the danger 
past, and that it was no longer imprudent for him to mix in 
the society of the castle, he was suspected by an Anglo-Irishman 
of the name of Dillon, denounced by him, and finally surrendered 
by Thomas Fleming, and conveyed to Dublin, where proceedings 
were set on foot against him by the Irish Council and the queen's 
ministers in England. 

His imprisonment was coincident with the suppression of the 
rising in Munster, and the Earl of Desmond was beginning that 
frightful outlaw-life which only ended with his miserable death. 

The object of the archbishop's accusers was to connect him 
with th'e designs of Rome and the Munster insurrection ; and the 
state papers preserved in London have disclosed to us the cor- 
respondence between Adam Loftus, the Protestant Archbishop 
of Dublin, on the one side, and "Walsingham and Cecil on the 
other. 

The only proofs of the Archbishop's having joined the south- 
ern confederacy were : 1. Suspicions, as he Avas consecrated in 
Rome about the time of the sailing of the expedition under James 
Eitzmaurice ; 2- The information of a certain Christopher Barn- 
well, then in jail, who was promised his life if he could furnish 
proofs enough to convict the prelate. The value of the testimony 
of an " informer " under such circumstances is proverbial ; yet 
all Barnwell could allege was, that "he was present at a conver- 
sation in Rome between Dr. Hurley and Cardinal Comensis, the 
Pope's, secretary, and the result of the whole conversation was, 



224 THE SUFFEEING OHTJEOH. 

"that the doctor did not know nor believe that the Eai'l of 
Kildare had joined the rebellion' of Fitzmaurice and Desmond, 
and he was rebuked hj the cardinal for not believing it." 

This was considered overwhelming proof against him, in spite 
of his positive denial. Torture was applied, but the most awful 
suiferings could not wring from him the acknowledgment of 
having taken part in the conspiracy. Yet Loftus and Wallop 
were of opinion that he was a " rebel " and ought to be put to 
death. The only difficulty which presented itself to the " Lords 
Justices " of Ireland was, that there was no statute in Ireland 
against " traitors " who had plotted beyond the seas, and they 
asked that the archbishop should either be sent to be tried in 
England, or tried in Ireland by martial law, which would screen 
them from responsibility. 

This last favor was granted them ; and the holy archbishop 
was taken from prison at early dawn, on a Friday, either in May 
or June, 1584. He was barbarously hanged in a withey (withe), 
calling on God, and forgiving his torturers with all his heart. 

Our purpose is not to inveigh against this judicial murder, 
and, by further details, increase the horror which every honest 
man must feel at the narrative of such atrocious proceedings. 
We will suppose, on the contrary, that the cooperation of the 
Archbishop of Cashel with Fitzmaurice and Desmond, and even 
with the Pope and King of Spain, had been clearly proved — as 
it is certain that, if not in this case, at least in some others, 
during the reign of Elizabeth, the bishops or priests accused had 
really taken part in the attempt of the Irish to free themselves 
from such tyranny — and insist that, even then, the murdered 
Catholic ecclesiastics really died for their religion, and could be 
called " rebels " in no sense whatever. 

First, the question might arise as to how far the Irish were 
subject to the English crown. We have seen how, a few years 
before, Gillapatrick, of Ossory, asserted his right of making war 
on England, when he felt sufficient provocation. Under Elizabeth 
the case Avas still clearer, at least for Catholics, after the excom- 
munication of the cjueen by Pius Y. As we have seen, the chief 
title of England to Ireland rested on two pretended papal bulls : 
another Pope could and did recall the grant, which had been 
founded on misrepresentation. Up to that time, there had been 
no real subjection by conquest, outside of the Pale, which formed 
but an insignificant part of the island. 

Under such circumstances, it must at least be admitted that 
a radically and clearly unjust law,, imposed by a foreign though 
perhaps suzerain power, could be justly resisted by force of arms. 
And such was the case in Ireland. The Queen of England — 
the Irish Parliament of 1539 had no other authority than that of 
the queen, and represented no part of the people — had made it 



THE SUFFERING OHUEOH. 225 

rebellion for the Irisli to remain faithful to their religion. "What 
could prevent the Irish from resisting such pretension, even at 
the cost of effusion of blood ? The early Christians, under the 
Roman Empire, it is true, never rose in arms against the bloody 
edicts of the Csesars or the Antonines ; but the cases are not 
parallel. 

Suppose that Greece or Asia Minor had never succumbed to 
the Koman power, and had become entirely Christian : no one 
would refuse to admit their right to offer armed resistance to the 
extension of the edicts of persecution into their territory. On 
the contrary, it would have been their duty to do so : and every 
one of their inhabitants, who was taken and executed as a rebel, 
would have been crowned with the martyr's crown. 

At this point, indeed, comes^in the consideration of the 
special motive which animated each belligerent, even when 
lighting on the right side. We are far from saying that all the 
Irishmen, particularly the leaders and chieftains who at that 
time ranged themselves under the banners of the Desmonds or 
the O'Neills, fought purely for Christ and religion. Many of 
them, no doubt, engaged in the contest from mere worldly mo- 
tives, perhaps even for purposes unworthy of Christians ; and 
in this case, those who fell in the struggle were in no sense sol- 
diers of Christ. 

But how many such are to be found among the .bishops, 
priests, or monks, who perished under Elizabeth ? May it not be 
said of them that, to a man, they fell for the sake of religion ? 
We may even be bold enough to say that the majority of the 
common Irish people who lost their lives in those wars may be 
placed in the same category as their spiritual rulers, being in 
reality the upholders of right and the champions of Catholicity. 

Let it be remembered that, at the period of which we speak, 
the only real question involved in the contest was gradually as- 
suming more and more a religious character. Henry YIII. and 
his deputy, St. Leger, had struck a fatal blow at clanship and 
Irish institutions in general, by bestowing on and compelling the 
chieftains to accept English titles, and by investing them with 
new deeds of their lands under- feudal tenure. By Elizabeth, 
the same policy was steadily and successfully pursued, her court 
being always graced by the presence of young Irish lords, edu- 
cated under her own eyes, and loaded with all her royal favors. 
All she asked of them in return was that they should become 
Queen's mem. The repugnance once felt by Irishmen for that 
gilded slavery was each day becoming less marked. But, while 
every thing was seemingly working so well for the attainment 
of Elizabeth's object at the commencement of her reign, a new 
feature suddenly shows itself, and grows rapidly into prominence 
— the attachment of the Irish to their religion, and the violent 
15 



226 THE SUFFEEING CHURCH. 

opposition to the cliange always kept foremost in view by the 
queen, namely the substitution of lier sj^iritual supremacy for 
that of the Pope. 

Thus we find the Irish leaders, when proclaiming their griev- 
ances, either on the eve of war, or the signing of a treaty of 
peace, always giving their religious convictions the first place on 
the list. The religious question, then, was becoming more and 
more the question, and, notwithstanding all her fine assurances 
that she would not infringe upon the religious predilections of 
the laity, Elizabeth's great purpose, in Ireland and in England, 
was to destroy Catholicity, by destroying the priesthood, root 
and branch. 

The nobles showed how fnlly convinced they were of this, 
when they came to adopt a system of concealment, even of du- 
plicity, to which Irishmen ought never to have been weak enough 
to submit. I^ot only were the practices of their religion confined 
to places where no Englishman or Protestant could penetrate, 
but gradually they allowed their houses — those sanctuaries of 
freedom — to be invaded by the pursuivants of the queen, search- 
ing for priests or monks " lately arrived from Pome." 

Secret apartments were constructed by skilful architects in 
noblemen's manors ; recesses were artfully contrived under the 
roofs, in roomy staircases, or even in basements and cellars. 
There the unfortunate minister of religion was confined for weeks 
and months, creeping forth only at night, to breathe the fresh air 
at the top of the house or in the thick shrubbery of the adjoining 
park. All the means of evading the law used by the Chris- 
tians of the first centuries were reproduced and resorted to in 
Catholic Ireland by chieftains who possessed the " secret promise " 
of the queen that their religion should not be interfered with, 
and that her supremacy should not be enforced against them. 

jSTot thus did the people act : their keen sense of injustice took 
in at once all the circumstances of the case. It was a religious 
persecution, nothing else ; and this the nobles also felt in their 
inmost souls. The people saw the ministers of religion hunted 
down, seized, dragged to prison, tried, convicted, barbarously 
executed ; they recognized it in its reality as a sheer attempt to 
destroy Catholicity, and as such they opposed it by every means 
in their power. They beheld the monks and friars treated as 
though they had been wild beasts ; the soldiers falling on them 
wherever they met them, and putting them to death with every 
circumstance of cruelty and insult, without trial, without even 
the identification required for outlaws. Mr. Miles O'Reilly's 
book, " Irish Martyrs, " is full of cases of this kind. Hence the 
people frequently off'ered open resistance to the execution of the 
law ; the soldiers had to disperse the mob ; but the real mob 
was the verv troop commanded by English officers. 



THE SUFFERING CHURCH. 2^7 

When at length the Irish lords no longer dared offer asylum 
to the outlawed priesthood in their manors and castles, the hut 
of the peasant lay open to them still. The greater the quantity 
of blood poured out by the executors of the barbarous laws, the 
greater the determination of the people to protect the oppressed 
and save the Lord's anointed. 

Then opened a scene which had never been witnessed, even 
under the most cruel persecutions of the tyrants of old Eome. 
The whole strength of the English kingdom had been called into 
play to crush the Irish nobility during the wars of Ulster and 
Munster ; the whole police of the same kingdom was now put 
in requisition for the apprehension and destruction of church- 
men. ISTay, from this very occupation, the great police system 
which since that time has flourished in most European states, 
arose, being invented or at least perfected for the purpose. 

Then, for the first time in modern history, numbers of 
" spies " and " informers " were paid for the service of English 
ministers of state. Not only did the cities of England and Ire- 
land, harbor cities chiefly, swarm with them, but they covered 
the whole country ; they were to be found everywhere : around 
the humble dwelling of the peasant and the artisan, in the streets 
and on the highways, inspecting every stranger who might be 
a friar or monk in disguise. They spread through the whole 
European Continent — along the coast and in the interior of 
France and Belgium, Italy and Spain, in the churches, convents, 
and colleges, even in the courts of princes, and, as we have seen 
in the case of Dr. Hurley, in the very halls of the Yatican. The 
English state papers have disclosed their secret, and the whole 
history is now before us. 

To support this army of spies and informers, the soldiers of 
that other army of England, who were em|)loyed either in 
keeping England under the yoke or in crushing freedom and 
religion out of Ireland, did not disdain to execute the orders 
which converted them into policemen and sbirri. And it may 
be said, to their credit, that they executed those orders Avith a 
ferocious alacrity unequalled in the annals of military life in 
other countries. If, during the most fearful commotions in 
France, the army has been employed for a similar purpose, it 
must be acknowledged that, as far as the troops wxre concerned, 
they performed their unwelcome task with reluctance, and soft- 
ened down, at least, their execution, by considerate manners and 
respectful demeanor. But these soldiers of Elizabeth "showed 
themselves, from first to last, full of ferocity. They generally 
went far beyond the letter of their orders ; they took an inhuman 
delight in adding insult to injury, uniting in their persons the 
double character of preservers of public order and ruffianly 
executioners of innocent victims. Many and many a record oi 



228 THE SUPFERmG- CHURCH. 

their barbarity is kept to this day. We add a few, only to jus- 
tify our necessarily severe language : 

" The Kev. Thaddeus Donald and John Hanly received their 
martyr's crown on the 10th of August, 1580. They had long 
labored among the suffering faithful along the southwestern coast 
of Ireland. When the convent of Bantry was seized by the 
English troops, these holy men received their wished-for crown 
of martyrdom. Being conducted to a high rock impending over 
the sea, they were tied back to back, and preci]3itated into the 
waves beneath." 

" In the convent of Enniscorthy, Thaddeus O'Meran, father- 
guardian of the convent, Felix O'llara, and Henry Layhode, un- 
der the government of Henry Wallop, Yiceroy of Ireland, were 
taken prisoners by the soldiers, for five days tortured in various 
ways, and then slain." 

" Eev. Donatus 0'E.iedy, of Connaught, and parish priest of 
Coolrah, when the soldiers of Elizabeth rushed into the village, 
sought refuge in the church ; but in vain, for he was there hanged 
near the high altar, and afterward pierced with swords, 12th of 
June, 1582." 

" While Drury was lord-deputy, about 1577, Fergal Ward, a 
Franciscan, . . . fell into the hands of the soldiery, and, being 
scourged with great barbarity, was hanged from the branches of 
a tree with the cincture of his own religious habit." 

In order to find a parallel to atrocities such as these, we must 
go back to the record of some of the sufferings of the early mar- 
tyrs — St. Ignatius of Antioch, for instance, who wrote of the 
guards appointed to conduct him to Italy : " From Syria as far 
as Rome, I had to fight with wild beasts, on sea and on land, 
tied night and day to a pack of ten leopards, that is to say, ten 
soldiers who kept me, and were the more ferocious the more I 
tried to be kind to them." 

Instances of such extreme cruelty are rare, even in the Acts 
of the early martyrs, but they meet us every moment in the 
memoirs of the days of Elizabeth. Both the police-spies and the 
soldier-police were animated with the rage and fury which must 
have possessed the soul of the queen herself ; for, after all, the 
cruelty practised in her reign, and mostly under her orders, was 
not necessary in order to secure her throne to her, during life ; 
and, as she could hope for no posterity of her own, it was not the 
desire of retaining the crown to her children which could excuse 
so much bloodshed and suffering. She evidently followed the 
promptings of a cruel heart in ' those atrocious measures which 
constitute the feature of the home policy of her reign. The per- 
secution which raged incessantly throughout her long career, in 
Ireland and England, is surely one of the most bloody in the 
annals of the Catholic Church. 



CHAPTER X. 

ENGLAND PEEPAEED FOE THE EECEPTION OF PE0TESTANTI8M — 
lEELAND NOT. 

It cost Elizabeth the greater part of her reign in time, and 
all the growing resources of a united England in material, to 
establish her spiritual supremacy in Ireland ; and yet, when, at 
her death, Mountjoy received orders to conclude peace on honor- 
able terms with the Ulster chieftains, her darling policy was 
abandoned, and failure, in fact, confessed. 

On the 30th of March, 1603, Hugh O'J^eill and Mountjoy met 
by appointment at Mellifont Abbey, where the terms of peace 
were exchanged. 0']^eill, having declared his submission, was 
granted amnesty for the past, restored to his rank, notwith- 
standing his attainder and outlawry, and reinstated in his dignity 
of Earl of Tyrone. Himself and his people were to enjoy the 
"full and free exercise of their religion ;" new letters-patent 
were issued restoring to him and other northern chieftains 
almost the whole of the lands occupied by their respective clans. 

O'Keill, on his part, was to renounce forever his title of 
" O'JSTeill, " and alloAV English law to prevail in his territory. 

How this last condition could agree with the iull and free 
exercise of the Catholic religion, the treaty did not explain ; but 
it is evident that the new acts of Parliament respecting religion 
were not to be included in the English law admitted by the Ulster 
chiefs. 

Meanwhile, the descendants of Strongbow's companions had 
been completely subdued in the south, Munster having been 
devastated, and the Geraldines utterly destroyed. Yet, even 
there, Protestantism was not acknowledged by such of the inhab- 
itants as were left. 

It may be well to compare here the different results which 
attended the declaration of the queen's supremacy in England 
and Ireland : 

At the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, England was 
stiU, outwardly at least, as Catholic as Ireland. Henry YIII. had 



230 IRELAND UNPEEPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

only aimed at starting a schism ; the Protestantism established 
under Edward had been completely swept away dming Mary's 
short reign. Could Elizabeth only have hoped to be acknowl- 
edged queen by the Pope, there can be little doubt that, even 
for political motives, she would have refrained from disturbing 
the peace of the country for the sake of introducing heresy. 
Religion was nothing to her — the crown every thing. 

It was not so easy a matter for her to establish heresy as for 
Henry to introduce schism. All the bishops of Henry's reign, 
with the exception of Fisher, had renounced their allegiance to 
Rome, in order to please the sovereign ; all the bishops of Mary's 
nomination remained faithful to Rome; and so difficult was it 
to find somebody who should consecrate the new prelates created 
by Elizabeth, that Catholic writers have, we believe, shown be- 
yond question that no one of the intruding prelates was really 
consecrated. 

Nevertheless, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, there is no 
doubt that the English people, with a few individual exceptions, 
were Protestant, and Protestants they have ever since remained. 

In Dr. Madden's "History of the Penal Laws," we read : 
" Father Campian was betrayed by one of Walsingham's spies, 
George Eliot, and found secreted in the house of Mr. Yates, of 
Lyford, in Berkshire, along with two other priests, Messrs. Ford 
and Collington. Eliot and his officers made a show of their 
prisoners to the multitude, and the sight of the priests in the 
hands of the constables was a matter of mockery to the unwise 
multitude. This was a frequent occurrence in conveying captured 
priests from one jail to another, or from London to Oxford, or 
vice versa, and it would seem, instead of finding sympathy from 
the populace, they met with contumely, insult, and sometimes 
even brutal violence. This is singular, and not easily accounted 
for ; of the fact, there can be no doubt. " 

Dr. Madden probably considered that, within a few years 
after the change of religion, the English people ought to have 
shown themselves as firm Catholics as did the Irish. But the 
explanation of the contumely and violence is easy : it was an 
English and not an Irish populace. The first had altogether 
forgotten the faith of their childhood, the second could not be 
brought to forsake it. The difficulty, in accounting for the dif- 
ference between them, is in getting at its true cause ; and to us 
it seems that one of the chief causes was the difference of race. 

The English upper classes, as a whole, were utterly indif- 
ferent to religion ; the one thing which affected them, soul and 
body, was their temporal interests, and, to judge by their ready 
acquiescence in all the changes set forth at the commencement 
of the last chapter, they would as soon have turned Mussulmen as 
Calvinists. The lower classes, at first merely passive, became 



IRELAND UNPREPAEED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 231 

afterward possessed by a genuine fanaticism for the new creed 
established by the Thirty-nine Articles ; so that, from that 
period until quite recently — and the spirit still lives — an English 
mob was always ready to demolish Catholic chapels, and establish- 
ments of any kind, wherever the piety of a few had succeeded in 
erecting such, however quietly. 

It is evident from the facts mentioned that, prior even to that 
extraordinary religious revolution called the Reformation, the 
Catholic faith did not possess a firm hold upon the English mind 
and heart, whatever may have been the case in previous ages. 
It is clear that even "the people " in England were not ready to 
submit to any sacrifice for the sake of their religion. 

There is small doubt that Elizabeth foresaw this, and expect- 
ed but little opposition on the part of the English nobility and 
people to the changes she purposed effecting. Had she imagined 
that the nation would have been ready to submit to any sacrifice 
rather than surrender their religion, she would at least have been 
more cautious in the promulgation of her measures, even though 
she had determined to sever her kingdom from Rome. She 
might have rested content with the schism introduced by her 
father, and this indeed would have sufficed for the carrying out 
of her political schemes. 

But she knew her countrymen too well to accredit them with 
a religious devotion which, if they ever possessed, had. long ago 
died out. She saw that England was ripe for heresy, and the 
result confirmed her worldly sagacity. How came it, then, that 
the change which w£^ absolutely impossible in Ireland, was so 
easily effected in the other country ? Or, to generalize the 
question : How is it that, to speak generally, the nations of 
^Northern Europe embraced Protestantism so readily, while those 
of Southern Europe refused to receive it, or were only slightly 
affected by it ? Ranke has remarked that, when, after the first 
outbreak in the !North, the movement had reached a certain 
point in time and space, it stopped, and, instead of advancing 
further, appeared to recede, or at least stood still. 

Many Protestant writers have attempted a weak and flippant 
solution of the question, and we are continually told of the su- 
perior enlightenment of the northern races, of their attachment 
to liberty, of their higher civilization, and other very fine and 
very easily-quoted things of the same kind, which, at the present 
moment, are admitted as truths by many, and esteemed as 
unanswerable explanations of the phenomenon. According to 
this opinion, therefore, the southern races were more ignorant, 
less civilized, more readily duped by priestcraft and king- 
craft ; above all, readier to Idow to despotism, and indifferent to 
freedom. 

Catholic writers, Balmez principally, have often given a satis- 



232 lEELAND UNPREPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

factory answer to the question ; jet, the replies whicL. tliey have 
made to the various sophisms touched upon, have seemingly 
produced no effect on the modern masses, who continue steadfast 
in their belief of what has been so often refuted. It would be 
presumptuous and probably quite useless, on our part, to enter 
into a lengthened discussion of the question. But, when confined 
to England, it is a kind of test to be applied to all those subjects 
of civilization and liberty, and is so clear and true that it cannot 
leave the least room for doubt or hesitation : moreover, as it 
necessarily enters into the inquiry which forms the heading of 
this chapter, it cannot be entirely laid aside. 

All that we purpose doing is, discovering why the northern 
nations fell a prey more readily to the disorganizing doctrines of 
Protestantism than the southern. The genei'dl fickleness of the 
human mind, which is so well brought out by the great Spanish 
writer, does not strike us as a sufficient cause ; for the mind of 
southern peoples is certainly not less fickle, on many points at 
least, than that of other races. 

In our comparison between the I^orth and the South, we 
class the Irish with the latter, although, geographically, they be- 
long to the former, and, indeed, constitute the only northern na- 
tion which remained faithful to the Church. ' 

First, let us state the broad facts for which we wish to assign 
some satisfactory reasons. 

After the social convulsions which attended the change of re- 
ligion had subsided somewhat, it was found that Protestantism 
had invaded the three Scandinavian king^doms, to the almost 
total exclusion of Catholicism, to such an extent, indeed, that, 
until quite recently, it was death or transportation for any per- 
son therein to return to the bosom of the mother Church. 

The same statement is true, to almost the same extent, of 
^Northern Germany, where open persecution, or rather war, 
raged until the establishment of " religious peace " toward 1608. 
Saxony, whence the heresy sprang, was its centre and stronghold 
in Germany ; and the Saxons were Scandinavians, having crossed 
over from the southern borders of the Baltic, where, for a long 
time, they dwelt in constant intercourse with the Danes, N"or- 
wegians, and Swedes. 

Saxon and ISTorman England was found to be, at the end of 
the^ sixteenth century, almost entirely Protestant, and the perse- 
cution of the comparatively few Catholics who survived flour- 
ished there in full vigor. 

A singular phenomenon presented itself in the Low Coun- 
tries. That portion of them subsequently known as Holland, 
which was first invaded and peopled by the ISTorthmen of Wal- 
cheren, became almost entirely Protestant, while Belgium, which 
was originally Celtic, remained Catholic. 



IRELAND UNPREPAEED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 233 

Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland, were divided between 
Protestantism and Catholicity, and the division exists to this day. 

In France a section only of the nobility, which was originally 
[N^orman as well as Frank, and under feudalism had become 
thoroughly permeated by the northern spirit, was found to have 
embraced the new doctrines, which were repudiated by the peo- 
ple of Celtic origin. It is true that, later on, the Cevennes moun- 
taineers received Protestantism from the old Waldenses ; but we 
are presenting a broad sketch, and do not deny that several 
minor lineaments may not fall in with the general picture. 

In Italy only literary men, in Spain a few rigorist prelates 
and monks, showed any inclination toward the " reform " party. 

On the whole, then, it is safe to conclude that the Scandina- 
vian mind was congenial to Protestantism. 

We say the Scandinavian mind, because the Scandinavian 
race extended, not only through Scandinavia proper, but also 
through Northern Germany, along the Baltic Sea and German 
Ocean ; through Holland by Walcheren ; through a portion of 
Central . and Southern Germany, as far down as Switzerland, 
which was invaded by Saxons at the time of Charlemagne, ancl 
after him, until Otho the Great gave them their final check, and 
subdued them more thoroughly than the great Charles had suc- 
ceeded in doing. 

Common opinion traces the Scandinavians and Germans back 
to the same race. In the generic sense, this is true ; and all the 
Indo-Germanic nations may have originally belonged to the same 
parent stock ; but, specifically, difterences of so striking a nature 
present themselves in that immense branch of the human family, 
that the existence of sub-races of a definite character, presuppos- 
ing dififerent and sometimes opposite tendencies, must be ad- 
mitted. 

Who can imagine that the Germans proper are identical with 
the Hindoos, although by language they, in common with the 
greater part of European nations, may belong to the same parent 
stock ? In like manner, the Germanic tribes, although possess- 
ing many things in common with the Scandinavian race, differ 
from it in various respects. 

The best ethnographic writers admit that the Scandinavian 
race, which they, in our opinion improperly, name Gothic, dif- 
fered greatly in its language from the Teutonic. The language 
of the first, retained in its purity in Iceland to this day, soon be- 
came mixed up with German proper in Denmark, Sweden, and 
even in I^Torway to a great extent. The languages differed there- 
fore originally, as did, consequently, the races. Even at this very 
moment an effort is being made by Scandinavians to establish 
the difference between themselves and the Teutons with respect 
to language and nationality. 



234 IRELAND UNPEEPAEED FOE PEOTESTxiNTISM. 

How far the religion of both was identical is a difficult ques- 
tion. We believe it very probable that the worship of Thor, 
Odin, and Frigga, was purely Scandinavian, and penetrated Ger- 
many, as far as Switzerland, with the Saxons. Hertha, accord- 
ing to Tacitus, was the supreme goddess of the Germans. She 
had no place in Scandinavian mythology. Ipsambul, so re- 
nowned among the Teutons, was quite unknown in Scandinavia. 
The Germans, in common with the Celts, considered the build- 
ing of temples unworthy the Deity ; whereas, the Scandinavian 
temples, chiefly the monstrous one of Upsala, are well known. 
Many other such facts might be brought out to show the differ- 
ence of their religions. 

The Germans showed themselves from the beginning attached 
to a country life ; and we know how the Frankish Merovingian 
kings loved to dwell in the country. The Scandinavians only 
cared for the sea, and manifested by their skill in navigation how 
they difiered from the Germans, who were less inc-lined even 
than the Celts for large naval expeditions. 

All this is merely given as strong conjecture, not as proof 
positive amounting to demonstration, of the real difference be- 
tween the two races — the Germanic and Scandinavian. 

But how was Protestantism congenial to the Scandinavian 
mind ? This second question is of still greater importance than 
the first. 

In the earlier portion of the book, we passed in review the 
character of the tribes who once clustered around the Baltic, with 
the exception of the Finns, who dwelt along the eastern coast ; 
and, grounding our opinion on unquestionable authorities, we 
found that character to consist mainly of cruelty, boldness, ra- 
pacity, system, and a spirit of enterprise in trade and navigation. 

When they embraced Christianity, it undoubtedly modified 
their character to a great extent, and many holy people lived 
among them, some of whom the Church has numbered among 
the saints. But the conquest of these ferocious pirates was un- 
doubtedly the greatest triumph ever achieved by the holy Spouse 
of Christ. 

• Yet, even after becoming Christian, they preserved for a long 
time — we speak not now of the present day — deep features of 
their former character, among others the old spirit of rapacity, 
and that systematic boldness which, when occasion demands, is 
ever ready to intrench upon the rights of others. They soon 
displayed, also, a general tendency to subject spiritual matters to 
individual reason, and the great among them to interfere and 
meddle with religious affairs. The Dukes of JSTormandy, the 
Kings of England, and the Saxon Emperors of Germany, seldom 
ceased disputing the rights of spiritual authority ; and the learned 
among them were forward to question the supremacy of Home 



lEELAi^D UNPREPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 235 

in many tilings, and to argue against what otlier people, more 
religiously inclined, would have admitted without controversy. 
That spirit of sjoeGulation, to which the Irish Four Masters part- 
ly ascribed the introduction of Protestantism into England, was 
rampant in the schools of these northern nations, when a superior 
civilization gave rise to the erection of universities and colleges 
in their midst. 

But over and above that systematic philosophical spirit, their 
character was deeply imbued with a material rapacity which, 
after all, has always constituted the great vice of those northern 
tribes. It is unnecessary to remind the reader that, in England 
chiefly. Protestantism was particularly grateful to the avaricious 
longings of the courtiers of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. The 
contiscation of ecclesiastical property and its distribution among 
the great of the nation was the chief incentive which moved 
them to adopt the convenient doctrines of the new order, and 
subvert the old religion of the country. This rapacious spirit 
showed itself also in Germany, though not so conspicuously as in 
England ; and certainly, in both countries, the universal confis- 
cation of the estates of religious houses, and the robbery of the 
plate and jewels of the churches, are prominent features in the 
history of the great Heformation. 

"William Cobbett has written eloquently on this subject, and 
marshalled an immense array of facts so difficult of denial that 
the defenders of Protestantism were compelled to resort to the 
petty subterfuge of retorting that the great English radical was 
a mere partisan, who never spoke sincerely, but always sup- 
ported the theory he happened to take up by exaggerated and 
distorted facts, which no one was bound to admit on his respon- 
sibility. Such was their reply ; but the awkward facts remained 
and remain still unchallenged. 

But, since Cobbett, men who could not be accused of par- 
tisanship and exaggeration have published authentic accounts of 
the unbounded rapacity of the Reformers of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, in England particularly, which all impartial men are bound 
to respect, and not attribute to any unworthy motive, since they 
are supported even by Protestant authorities. "We quote a few, 
taken from the " History of the Penal Laws" by Dr. R. R. 
Madden : 

" The Earl of Warwick, afterward Duke of ITorthumber- 
land, was the first of the aristocracy in England who inveighed 
publicly against the superfluity of episcopal habits, the expense 
of vestments and surplices, and ended in denouncing altars 
and the ' mummery ' of crucifixes, pictures and images in 
churches. 

" The earl had an eye to the Church plate, and the precious 
jewels that ornamented the tabernacles and ciboriums. Many 



236 lEELAND UNPEEPAKED FOR PROTESTAITTISM. 

courtiers soon were moved by a similar zeal for religion — a lust 
for the gold, silver, and jewels of the churches. In a short 
time, not onlj the property of churches, but the possession of 
rich bishoprics and sees, were shared among the favorites of 
Cranmer and the protector (Somerset) : as were those of the 
See of Lincoln, ' with all its manors, save one ; ' the Bishopric 
of Durham, which was allotted to Dudley, Duke of ISTorthumber- 
land ; of Bath and Wells, eighteen or twenty of whose manors, 
in Somerset, were made a present of to the protector, with a 
view of protecting the remainder." 

A number of similar details are to be found in the pages of 
the same author. 

Dr. Heylin, a Protestant, says : " That the consideration of 
profit did advance this work — of the Beformation — as much 
as any other, if jyei'chanee not more^ may be collected from an 
inquiry made two years after, in which (inquiry) it was to be 
■ interrogated : ' What jewels of gold, or silver crosses, candle- 
sticks, censers, chalices, copes, and other vestments, were then re- 
maining in any of the cathedral or parochial churches, or, other- 
wise, had been embezzled or taken away ? '. . . The leaving," 
adds Dr. Heylin, " of one chalice to every church, with a cloth 
or covering for the communion-table, being thought sufficient. 
The taking down of altars by command, was followed by the 
substitution of a board, called the Lord's Board, and subsequent- 
ly of a table, by the determination of Bishop Kidley. 

"' Many private persons' parlors were hung with altar-cloths, 
their tables and beds covered with copes, instead of carpets and 
coverlets, and many made carousing cups of the sacred chalices, 
as once Belshazzar celebrated his drunken feasts in the sanctified 
vessels of the Temple. It was a sorry house, not worth the 
naming, which had not something of this furniture in it, though 
it were only a fair large cushion made of a cope or altar-cloth, to 
adorn their windows, and to make their chairs appear to have 
somewhat in them of a chair of state." 

Could such scenes as these have been surpassed by what took 
place during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, in the rude 
towns of Norway and Denmark, at the return of a powerful sea- 
kong, with his large fleet, from a piratical excursion into South- 
ern Europe, when the spoils of many a Christian church and 
wealthy house went to adorn the savage dwellings of those 
barbarians ? Adam of Bi'emen relates how he saw, with his own 
eyes, the rich products of European art and industry accumulated 
in the palace of the King of Denmark, and in the loathsome 
dwellings of the nobility, or exposed for sale in the public markets 
of the city. 

But rapacity formed only one characteristic of the Scandina- 
vians ; the mind of the people, moreover, showed itself, notwith- 



IRELAND UNPREPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 237 

standing tlie intricate and monstrous mythology which it had 
created when pagan, of a rationalistic and anti-supernatural 
tendency. Their mind was naturally systematic and reasoning ; 
it discussed spiritual matters in all their material aspects, and 
thus gave rise to those speculations which soon became the source 
of heresy. Hence, in England and the north of Germany, the 
power of Rome was always called in question ; and as the 
English mind was altogether Scandinavian, while that of the 
Germans was mixed with more of a southern disposition, the 
chief trouble in Germany, between the empire and the Roman 
Church, lay in the question of investitures, which combined a 
material and spiritual aspect, whereas, in England, the quarrel 
was almost invariably of a pecuniary nature, as, for instance, 
Peter's pence. 

Even in the most Catholic times, the English made a bitter 
grievance of the levying of Peter's pence among them, and of 
the giving of English benefices to prelates of other nations, which 
also resolved itself into a question of revenue or money. And 
so characteristic was the grievance of the whole nation that it 
was restricted to no class, churchmen and monks being as loud 
in their denunciations of Rome as the king and the nobles ; 
and thus the theological questions of the papal supremacy and of 
ecclesiastical authority generally took with them quite a mate- 
rial form. The diatribes of the Benedictine monk Matthew Paris 
are well known, and their worldly spirit can only excite in us 
pity that they should have been the chief cause of the destruction 
of his own order in England and Ireland, and of the total sj^oli- 
ation of the religious houses in whose behalf he imagined that 
he wrote. 

If the harm done by those contemptible wranglings about 
Peter's pence and benefices had been confined to depriving the 
pontifical exchequer of a revenue which was cheerfully granted 
by other nations to aid the Father of the Faithful, the result was 
to be regretted ; but, after all, Christendom would not have suf- 
fered in a much more sensible quarter. But in England the 
question passed immediately to the election of bishops and 
abbots, and thus the opposition to Rome gradually assumed 
much vaster proportions. 

The nation, also, in the main, sided with the kings against 
the popes. Every burgher of London, York, or Canterbury, got 
it into his head that Rome had formed deep designs of spoliation 
against his private property, and purposed diving deep into his 
private purse. In such a state of public opinion, respect for 
spiritual authority could not fail to diminish and finally die out 
altogether ; and, when the voice of the Pontifi" was heard on im- 
portant subjects in which the best interests of the nation were 
involved, even the clearest proof that Rome was right, and de- 



238 IRELAND UNPREPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

sired only the good of tlie j)eople, could not entirely dispel tlie 
susj^icious fears and distrusts which must ever lurk in the mind 
of the miser against those he imagines wish to rob him. 

It is not possible to enter here into further details, but, if the 
reader wish for stronger proofs of the "questioning spirit," "rea- 
soning mistrust," and " systematic doggedness," natural to the 
*Scandinavian mind, he has only to reflect on what took place in 
England at the time of the Keforjnation. Every question re- 
specting the soul, every supernatural aspiration of the Christian, 
every emotion of a living conscience, appears to be altogether ab- 
sent from all those English nobles, prelates, theologians, learned 
university men, even simple priests and monks often, save a very 
few who, with the noble Thomas More, thought that " twenty 
years of an easy life could not without folly be compared with an 
eternity of bliss." The reasoning faculty of the mind, nourished 
on " speculations," had replaced faith, and, every thing of the 
supernatural order being obliterated, nothing was left but world- 
ly wisdom and material aspirations for temporal well-being. 

By reviewing other characteristics of the Scandinavian race, 
we might arrive at the same conclusion ; but our space forbids 
us to go into them. After what has been said, however, it is 
easy to see how well prepared was the English nation for accept- 
ing the change of religion almost without a murmur. 

There was, indeed, some expression of indignation on the 
part of the people at the beginning of the reign of Edward YL, 
when the desecration of the churches began. " Yarious commo- 
tions," says Dr. Madden, " took place in consequence of the re- 
viling of the sacrament, the casting it out of the churches in 
some places, the tearing down of altars and images ; in one of 
which tumults, one of the authorities was stabbed, in the act of 
demolishing some objects of veneration in a church. 

" The whole kingdom, in short, was in commotion, but par- 
ticularly Devonshire and jSTorfolk. In the former county, the in- 
surgents besieged Devon ; a noble lord was sent against them, 
and, being reenforced by the "Walloons — a set of German mer- 
cenaries brought over to enable the government to carry out 
their plans — his lordship defeated these insurgents, and many 
were executed by martial law." 

But this remnant of ajffection for the religion of their fathers 
seems to have soon died out, since at the death of Edward the 
people appeared to have become thoroughly converted to the 
new doctrines. At the very coronation of Mary, a Catholic 
clergyman having prayed for the dead and denounced the perse- 
cutions of the previous reign, a tumult took place ; the preacher 
was insulted, and compelled to leave the pulpit. What wonder, 
then, that, at the death of Elizabeth, England was thoroughly 
Protestant ? 



IRELAND UNPREPAEED EOR PROTESTANTISM. 239 

We are very far from ignoring tlie noble examples of attach- 
ment to tlieir religion displayed by Christian heroes of every class 
in England during those disastrous days. The touching biogra- 
phies of the English martyrs, told in the simple pages of Bishop 
Challoner, cannot be read without admiration. The feeling pro- 
duced on the Catholic reader is precisely that arising from a 
perusal of the Acts of the Christian martyrs under the Eoman 
emperors, which have so often strengthened our faith and drawn 
tears of sorrow from our eyes. At this moment, particularly 
when so many details, hitherto hidden, of the lives of Catholics, 
religious, secular priests, laymen, women, during those times, are 
coming to light in manuscripts religiously preserved by private 
families, and at last being published for the edification of all, the 
story is moving as well as inspiring of the heroism displayed by 
them, not only on the public scaiiold, but in obscure and loath- 
some jails, in retreats and painful seclusion, continuing during 
long years of an obscure life, and ending only in a more obscure 
death, when the victim of persecution was fortunate enough to 
escape capture. There is no doubt that, when the whole story 
of the hunted Catholics in England shall be known, as moving a 
narrative of their virtues will be written as can be furnished by 
the ecclesiastical annals of any people. 

^Nevertheless, what has been said of the nation, as a nation, 
remains a sad fact which cannot be doubted. Those noble ex- 
ceptions only prove that the promptings of race are not supreme, 
and that God's grace can exalt human nature from whatever 
level. 

How different were the nations of the Latin and Celtic stock ! 
With them the attachment to the religion of their fathers was 
not the exception, but the rule, and it is only necessary to bear 
in mind what the Abbe McGeoghegan has said — that, at the 
death of Elizabeth, scarcely sixty Irishmen, take them all in all, 
had professed the new doctrines — in order at once to comprehend 
the steady tendency toward the path of duty imparted by true 
nobility of blood, ITor did the Irish stand alone in this stead- 
fastness ; it is needless to call to mind how the people generally 
throughout France, and particularly in Paris, acted at the time 
■when the Huguenot noblemen would have rooted in the soil the 
errors planted there before, and already bearing fruit in Ger- 
many, Switzerland, and England. 

It looks as though we had lost sight of the interesting ques- 
tion proposed at the outset, and of which so far not a word has 
been said — whether Protestantism spread so readily in the Korth, 
because it found that region peopled with races better disposed 
for civilization, if not taking the lead already in that respect, and 
men ardent for freedom and impatient of servitude of any kind. 
We stated that the solution of this questiouj particularly in the 



240 IRELAND UNPEEPAEED EOE PEOTESTANTISM. 

case of England, is clear, and consequently not to be discarded 
on account of previous solutions of tlie same question, which 
have scarcely met with any attention from the adverse side. 

One thing certainly undeniable is, that neither in its origin, 
nor even in its consequences, can Protestantism be esteemed as 
in any sense the promoter of freedom and civilization in the 
British islands. 

It has always struck us as strange that sensible men, ac- 
quainted with history, could maintain that an aspiration after 
freedom and a higher civilization gave to Germany and England 
a; leaning toward Protestantism. We can understand how the 
state of Europie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may 
give a coloring to the statement of a partisan writer, desirous of 
explaining in these modern times the greater amount of freedom 
really enjoyed in England, and the advanced material prosperity 
visible generally among Protestant N^orthern nations. So much 
we can understand. But, to make Protestantism the origin of 
freedom and civilization, and ascribe to it what happened subse- 
quent to its spread indeed, but what really resulted from very 
different causes, passes our comprehension. 

As far as freedom goes, the most superficial reader must 
know that there was not a particle of it left in England when 
Protestantism commenced ; and it were easy to show that there 
was less of it in Germany than in Italy, Spain, and even Prance. 

Who can mention English freedom in the same breath with 
Henry and Elizabeth Tudor ? How could the actions of those 
two members of the family advance it in the least degree, and 
was it not precisely the slamsh disposition of the English people 
at the time which prepared them so admirably for the reception 
of German heresy ? The people were treated like a set of slaves, 
and stood for nothing in the designs of those great political 
rulers. In the very highest of the aristocracy, there lingered 
not a spark of the old brave spirit which wrung Magna CTiarta 
from the heart of a weak sovereign. The king or queen could 
fearlessly trample on every privilege of the nobility, send the 
proudest lords of the nation to the block, almost without trial, 
and confiscate to the swelling of the royal purse the immense 
estates of the first English families. There is no need of proofs 
for this. The proofs are the records, the headings, as it were, of 
the history of the times which one may read as he runs ; it con- 
stitutes the very essence of their history ; and events of the six- 
teenth century in England scarcely present us with any thing 
else. This state of things was the natural result of the general 
anarchy which prevailed during the " Wars of the Poses," 

A more interesting and intricate question still might be 
raised here : how to explain the appearance of such a phenome- 
non in so proud a nation ? Had the Catholic religion, M^iich, up 



lEELAND UNPEEPAEED FOE PEOTESTANTISM. 241 

to that time, had been the only religion of the conntry, any thing 
to do with the matter ? These questions might furnish material 
for a very animated discussion. But, with regard to the fact 
itself — the slavish disposition of Englishmen at that "time under 
kingly and queenly rule — ^no doubt can possibly exist. 

To show that Catholicity had nothing to do with the intro- 
duction of such a despotism, would give rise to a dissertation too 
long for us to enter upon. We merely offer a few suggestions, 
which, we think, will prove sufficient and satisfactory for our 
purpose to every candid reader : 

I. Catholic theology had certainly never brought about such 
a state of affairs. In all Catholic schools of the day, in England 
as on the Continent, St. Thomas was the great authority, and 
his work, " De Regmnine PrinGipum,^^ was in the hands of all 
Catholic students. Luther was the first to reject St. Thomas. 

In this book, all were taught that, if, among the various kinds 
of government, " that of a king is best," in the opinion of the 
author, "that of a tyrant is the worst." And a tyrant he de- 
fines as " any ruler who despises the common good, and seeks 
his private advantage." 

In that book of the great doctor, all may read : " The farther 
the government recedes from the common weal, the more unjust 
is it. It recedes farther from the common weal in an oligarchy, 
in which the welfare of a few is sought, than in a democracy, 
whose object is the good of the many. . . . But farther still does 
it recede from the common weal in a tyrannous government, by 
which the good of one alone is sought." 

The general consequence which St. Thomas draws from this 
doctrine is, that, " if a ruler governs a multitude of freemoD for 
the common good of the multitude, the government will be good 
and Just as becomes freemen." 

Such was the political doctrine taught in the Catholic univer- 
sities of Europe until the sixteenth century ; but, in all proba- 
bility, this golden work, ^^ De Regimine Principwn,^^ was no 
longer the text-book in the English schools of the time of Henry 
Tudor. 

But, when, entering into details, the holy and learned author 
goes on to contrast the contrary effects produced by freedom and 
despotism on a nation, how could Henry willingly permit the 
circulation of such words as the following ? 

" It is natural that men brought under terror" (a tyrannical 
government) " should degenerate into beings of a slavish disposi- 
tion, and become timid and incapable of any manly and daring 
enterprise — an assertion which is proved by the conduct of coun- 
tries which have been long subjected to a despotic government. 
Solomon says : ' When the imperious are in power, men hide 
away ' in order to escape the cruelty of tyrants, nor is it astonish- 
16 



242 IRELAND UNPREPAEED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

ing; for a man governing without- law, and according to his own 
caprice, diifers in nothing from a beast of prey. Hence, Solomon 
designates an impious ruler as ' a roaring lion and a ravenous 
bear.' 

" Because, therefore, the government of one- is to be preferred 
— which is the best — and because this government is liable to 
degenerate into tyranny — ^which has been proved to be the worst 
— hence, the most diligent care is to be taken so to regulate 
the establishment of a king over the people, that he may not fall 
into tyranny." 

Finally, St. Thomas epitomizes the doctrines of this whole 
book in his " Sximma^'' as follows : " A tyrannical government is 
unjust, being administered, not for the common good, but for the 
private good of the ruler ; therefore, its overtlu'ow is not sedi- 
tion, unless when the subversion of tyranny is so inordinately 
pursued that the multitude suifers more from its overthrow than 
from the existence of the government." 

The subject might be illustrated by any quantity of extracts 
from the writings of other great theologians of the middle ages ; 
but what we have said is enough for our purpose. It is manifest 
•that Catholic doctrine cannot have brought about the state of 
England under the Tudors. 

II. Another, and a very important suggestion, is the folio w- 
img : it certainly was not the Catholic hierarchy, least of all the 
pontifical power, which produced it. 

Whatever may have been written derogatory to the institu- 
tions existing in Europe during the mediaeval period, several 
great facts, most favorable to the Catholic religion, have been 
commonly admitted by Protestant writers, from which we select 
two. The first of these was originally stated by M. Guizot, in 
his " Civilization in Europe," namely, that the kingdom of 
France was created by Christian bishops. Since that first admis- 
sion, other non-Catholic writers have gone further, and have felt 
compelled to admit that, as a general rule, the modern European 
nations have all been created, nurtured, fostered, by Cathohc 
bishops, and that the first free Parliaments of those nations 
were, in fact, " councils of the Church," either of a purely cleri- 
cal character and altogether free from the intermixture of lay 
elements, such as the Councils of Toledo, in Spain, or acting in 
concert with the representatives of the various classes in the na- 
tions. 

The clergy, as all readers know, the clerlis^ were the first to 
take the lead in civil afiairs, being more enlightened than the 
other classes, and holding in their body all the education of the 
earlier times. It is unnecessary to add to this fact that, among 
a really Christian people, the voice of religion is listened to be- 
fore all others. And is it not to-day a well-ascertained fact 



lEELANI) UNPEEPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 243 

that, ill the main, the influence exerted by the clergy on the for- 
mation of modern European kingdoms was in favor of a well- 
regulated freedom based on the iirst law — the law of God — that 
primal source of true liberty and civilization ? To the clergy, 
certainly, and to the monks, is chiefly due the abolition of sla- 
very ; and the bishops took a very active and prominent part in 
the movements of the communes, to which the Third Estate 
owes its birth. 

A malignant ingenuity has been displayed by many writers, 
in ransacking the pages of history, in order to fasten on certain 
prelates of the Church charges of despotism and oppression. 
But, apart from the fact that the narratives so carefully compiled 
have, in many cases, turned out to be perversions of the truth, 
and granting even that all these allegations are impartial and 
true, the general tenor and tendency of the history of those 
times is now admitted to be ample refutation of such accusations, 
and impartial writers confess that the ecclesiastical influence, 
during those ages, M^as clearly set against the oppression of the 
people, and finally resulted in the formation of those represent- 
ative and moderate governments which are the boast of the 
present age ; and that the principles enunciated by the great 
schoolmen, led by Thomas Aquinas, founded the order of society 
on justice, religion, and right. The more history is studied 
honestly, investigated closely, and viewed impartially, the more 
plainly does the great fact shine forth that the Catholic hierarchy, 
in the various European nations, constituted the vanguard of 
true freedom and order. 

With regard to the papal power, it is a curious instance of 
the reversal of human judgment, and a very significant fact, 
that those very Popes who, a hundred years ago, were looked 
upon, even by Catholic writers, as the embodiment of super- 
cilious arrogance and sacrilegious presumption, namely, Gregory 
YIL, Innocent III., and Boniface YIIL, are now acknowledged 
to have been the greatest benefactors to Europe in their time, 
and true models of supreme Christian bishops. 

But, if these two facts be admitted, the question recurs, How 
is it that the governments of several kingdoms, and that of 
England in particular, had, during the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, merged into complete and unalloyed despotism ? As 
our present interest in the question is restricted to England, we 
confine ourselves to that country, and proceed to treat of it in a 
few words. 

Under the Tudors, the government grew to be altogether 
irresponsible, personal, and despotic, chiefly because under pre- 
vious reigns, and constantly since the establishment of the Kor- 
man line of kings, the authority of Kome, which formed the only 
great counterpoise to kingly power at the time, had been gradu- 



2U lEELAND UNPREPAEED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

ally undermined, while tlie bisliops, being deprived of tlie aid of 
tlie supreme Pontiff, had become mere tools in the hands of the 
monarchs. 

The particular shape which the opposition to Home took in 
England, compared with a similar opposition in Germany, has 
been already touched upon ; it was found to be involved chiefly 
in the question of tribute-money and benefices, the latter being 
also reduced to a money difficulty. It was seen that the monks 
and the people sided generally with the kings, and gradually 
took a dislike and mistrust to every thing coming from Rome ; 
the authority of the monarch, though not precisely strengthened 
thereby, was left without the control of a superior tribunal to 
direct him, and consequently the kings, if they chose, were left 
to follow the impulse of their own caprice, which, according to 
St. Thomas, forms the characteristic of tyranny. 

Other causes, doubtless, contributed to pave the way for and 
consolidate the despotism of the Kings of England. Among 
such causes may be mentioned the extraordinary successes which 
attended the English arms, led by their warrior kings in France, 
and the frightful convulsions subsequently arising from the Wars 
of the Eoses ; but we doubt not the one mentioned above was 
the chief, and, of itself, would in the long-run have brought 
about the same result. 

Protestantism, therefore, was neither the growth of freedom 
in England, nor did it plant freedom there at its introduction, 
inasmuch as the royal power became more absolute than ever by 
its predominance, and by the first principle which it laid down, 
that the king was supreme in Church as well as in state. Can 
its origin in England, then, be accounted for by the existence of 
a higher civilization, anterior to it in point of time, out of which 
it grew, or, at least, by a true aspiration toward such. 

This question is as easy of solution as the first : There can 
be no doubt that the nations which remained either entirely or 
in the main faithful to the Church, in point of learning and 
civilization, ranked far beyond the Northern nations, where her- 
esy so early found a permanent footing, and that in the South also 
the tendencies toward a higlier civilization were at that time of 
a most marked and extraordinary character, so much so that the 
reign of Leo X. has become a household phrase to express the 
perfection of culture. 

England, as a nation, was at that period only just beginning 
to emerge from barbarism, -and in fact was the last of the 
European nations to adopt civilized customs and manners in the 
political, civil, and social relations of life. 

In politics she was, until that epoch, plunged in frightful 
dynastic revolutions, and as yet had not learned the first prin- 
ciples of good government. In civil affairs, her code was the 



IRELAND TJNPEEPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 245 

most barbarous, lier feudal customs tbe most revolting, lier whole 
history the most appalling of all Christendom. In social habits, 
she had scarcely been able to retain a few precious fragments of 
good old Catholic times ; and the fearful scenes through which 
the nation had passed, which, according to J. J. Rousseau, for 
once expressing the truth, render the reading of that period of 
her history almost impossible to a humane man, had sunk her 
almost completely in degradation. The reader will understand 
that the England here spoken of is the England of three centuries 
ago, and not of to-day. 

If by civilization is understood learning and the fine arts, 
what, in general phrase, is expressed by culture and refinement, 
how could England compare at the time with Italy, Flanders, 
Spain, France, all Latin or Celtic nations ? How can it be pre- 
tended that she was better fitted for the reception of a-more spirit- 
ual and elevating religion than any of the countries mentioned? 

Two great names may be brought forward as proving that 
the expressions used are harsh and ill-founded — Shakespeare 
and Milton ; a third, Bacon, we omit for reasons which our space 
forbids us to give. 

Shakespeare, whose name may rank with those of Homer and 
Dante, was not a product of those times. He was a gift of 
Heaven. At any other epoch he would have been as great, per- 
haps greater. Wliat he received from his surroundings and from 
the " civilization " with which he was blessed, he has handed 
down to us in the uncouth form, the intricacy of plot and 
adventures, which would have rendered barbarous a poet less 
naturally gifted. And, although the question has never been 
definitely settled, it is probable that he was born and lived a 
Catholic ; and it is strange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells 
us, was present at some of his plays, could endure his faithful 
portrayal of friars and nuns, while she was persecuting their 
originals so barbarously at the time ; strangest of all, how she 
could bear to look upon the true and noble image of Katherine 
of Aragon, whom Henry in his good moment pronounces " the 
queen of earthly queens," contrasted with her own mother, to 
whom the shrewd old court lady tells the story : 

" There was a lady once ('tis an old story), 
That would not be a queen, that would she not. 
For all the mud in Egypt : — Have you heard it ? " 

Thus did Shakespeare contrast Elizabeth's wanton mother 
with the noble woman whom Henry discarded for a toy. And 
some critics can only find a reason for the composition of the 
"Merry "Wives of "Windsor" and the " Sonnets" as an offering 
to the lewd queen. N^othing more did he owe to his time. 



246 IRELAND UNPEEPAEED FOR PEOTESTANTISM. 

And Milton, who, thongli his father was a Catholic, was him- 
self a rank Pnritan, something of what we have said of Shake- 
speare may be said of him. At all events, all his cultivation and 
taste came from Italy. The poets of that really civilized country 
had polished his uncouth nature, as it were in spite of itself, and 
added to the depth of his wonderful genius the beauty and 
soft harmony of verse that ever flowed freely, and the strength 
of a nervous and sonorous prose. 

J^ow comes the question : K the origin of Protestantism in 
England cannot be attributed to freedom and civilization, may it 
not, at least, be maintained that the natural result of Protestant- 
ism was the acquisition of true freedom and of a higher civiliza- 
tion ? Is it not true that to-day Protestant nations are in ad- 
vance of others in both these respects? And to what other 
cause can such advancement be ascribed than to the " reformed 
religion ? " Is it not the freedom which has come to the human 
mind, after the rejection of the yoke of spiritual authority, and 
the proclamation of the rights of individual reason, that has 
brought about the present advanced state of affairs ? 

We know all these fine-sounding phrases which are so con- 
tinuously dinned into our ears, and republished, day after day in 
a thousand forms. The question, we admit, is not so easy of 
solution as the first, and might, indeed, without suspicion of 
evasion, be discarded as not coming under the head of this chap- 
ter, which spoke of origin and not of consequences. JSTeverthe- 
less, a few words may be devoted to the subject, to prove that 
the answer must still be in the negative. 

The first result of Protestantism was undoubtedly to extin- 
guish as completely as possible the remaining sparks of truly 
liberal thought promulgated in Europe by the Catholic doctors 
of the middle ages. "Wherever the new doctrines spread, secular 
rulers were not only freed from pontifical control, but were 
themselves invested with supreme ecclesiastical power. The 
effective check which the paternal and bold voice issuing from 
the Yatican had exercised on kings and princes was in a mo- 
ment taken away. In Germany, England, and Scandinavia, the 
kings and petty princes, and dukes even, became each so many 
popes in their own dominions. And this took place with the 
consent and frequently at the earnest request of tlie Keformers. 

Even the European states which did not fall away from the 
old faith of Christendom took advantage, it might almost be 
said, of the difficult position in which the Holy Father found 
himself, to countenance new doctrines with respect to the limits 
of the authority of the Supreme Pontiff; and the new_ errors 
which so suddenly appeared in France and elsewhere, diiring the 
prevalence and at the extinction of the great schism, limiting the 
power of the Popes in many matters where it had been consid- 



lEELAND UNPEEPAEED POE PEOTESTANTISM. 247 

ered binding, broke out again, in France principally, under tlie 
lead of Protestant or Erastian parliamentarians and legists, under 
the name of Galilean liberties — pretended liberties, wliicli would 
really make tlie Cliurcli a subordinate adjunct of the State, in- 
stead of what it is, a spiritual living body ruled exclusively by a 
spiritual head. 

How could the cause of true liberty in Europe be promoted 
by such altered circumstances as these ? — to say nothing of the 
disastrous imprudence with which those blind rulers and so- 
called theologians took away the key-stone of the European 
social edifice, which grew weaker from that day forth, until now 
we see it tottering to its fall. 

The introduction of Protestantism, then, was one of the 
chief causes of the change by which a much greater personal 
power was transferred to the hands of the sovereign than he had 
ever before held, and it is no surprise to see the absolutism of 
emperors and kings, in Christian Europe, date from its coming. 

As time passed on, the cause acting on a larger scale, em- 
bracing a wider circumference, and drawing within its circle 
vaster territories, the world saw absolute rule established in 
England, France, Spain, and Germany. Previous to the six- 
teenth century, the word " absolutism " was unknown in Chris- 
tendom, as was the doctrine of the "divine right of kings" 
understood and preached as it has since been in England. 

But, to farnish details which should render these reflections 
more striking, would require an unravelling of the whole tangled 
skein of history during those times. 

Nevertheless, we must come. to consider the last refuge of 
Protestant liberalism. Did not the Reformation really eman- 
cipate modern nations, and gradually bring about the whole 
system of representative governments, which, starting from Eng- 
land, have now, in fact, become, more or less, general through- 
out Europe ? 

Our answer is, Yes and No. It may be granted that Prot- 
estantism did give rise to a certain kind of liberalism very 
prevalent in our days ; but such liberalism is very far from 
bestowing on nations true liberty and stability ; hence their 
constant agitation, and the perils of society which threaten all, 
even the specially favored Protestant nations themselves as much 
as any. 

It was indeed the new doctrines which brought about the 
" Commonwealth " in England, and the subsequent Pevolution 
of 1688 ; between which two events, however, great dififerences 
exist. 

The destruction of monarchy under and in the person of 
Charles I. was the just retribution dealt by Providence to the 
English kings, who had been the first openly to shake off from a 



248 lEELAFD UNPREPAEED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

great nation tlie wise and beneficent yoke of Home. At all 
events, one thing is certain, that' under the "Protector," the 
child of the devolution, as little as under the Protestant Tudors, 
could the English scarcely be regarded as freemen. 

Cromwell banished from their hall the representatives of 
the people. He could scarcely find epithets opprobrious enough 
for Magna Charta, which the people considered, and rightly, as 
the palladium of English liberty. In his scornful order to 
" take away that bawble," though the " bawble " immediately 
i-eferred to was the Speaker's mace, the word meant the freedom 
of the nation. He was as absolute a monarch as ever ruled 
England. The liberty enjoyed under his regime was as mean- 
ingless for every class as for the Catholics, whom he more im- 
mediately oppressed, and was ill compensated for by the material 
prosperity which his genius knew so well how to secure. 

It was his despotic rule, in fact, and the fear of anarchy 
which afirighted the minds of the people at his death — the dread 
of a government of rival soldiers — ^which rendered so easy the 
triumphant restoration of the worthless Stuarts, in the person of 
the most worthless of them all, Charles II. 

The true constitutional liberty of which England may fairly 
boast was the work of a long series of years subsequent to the 
Eevolution of 1688. It was the work of the whole eighteenth 
century, in fact, and was grounded on the fragments of old 
Catholic doctrines and customs. In no sense can it be called the 
result of Protestantism, save as coming after it in point of time. 

Whoever is acquainted with the state of religion and society 
in England, during the latter part of the seventeenth and the 
whole of the eighteenth century, needs not to be told that, 
among the ruling classes, faith in a revealed religion had ceased 
to exist. The yoke of Pome once shaken ofi*, the human mind 
was quick to draw all the consequences of the principle of entire 
independence in religious matters. Tindal, Collins, Hobbes, 
Shaftesbury, and other philosophers, had openly denounced reve- 
lation, and that portion of the nation which esteemed itself 
enlightened embraced their new doctrines. It would be false to 
imagine that, in 1700 and afterward, the English were as firm 
believers in the Church of England's Thirty-nine Articles as 
they seemed to be at the beginning of this century. The whole 
of the last century was for all Europe, with the exception of fhe 
two peninsulas of Italy and Spain, a period of avowed disbelief. 

Even Presbyterian Scotlandi did not escape the contagion, 
and some theologians and preachers of the Kirk at that time are 
now praised for their liberal views of religion, that is, for their 
want of real faith. The influence of Wesley and his fellow- 
workers on the English mind, and the dread of the spread of 
French infidelity and jacobinism, were more extensive and 



lEELAJ^D UNPEEPAKED FOE PEOTESTANTISM. 249 

eifectual than people are apt to imagine ; and tliere is no doubt 
that, seventy years ago, England was far more of a believing 
country than she had been for a hundred years before. 

But, if even Scotch Presbyterian ministers and Church of 
England men, such as Laurence Sterne, were unworthy of the 
name of Christian, what are we to think of those w^ho had to 
profess no outward faith in Christianity, because of ministerial 
offices ? There is no doubt that, in the mass, they were almost 
completely void of any faith in revealed religion. 

To such men as these is England indebted for the develop- 
ment of her constitution. If Protestantism had any share in it 
at all, it did not go beyond preparing the way for the destruction 
of Christianity in the mind and heart of the people ; or, rather, 
constitutional liberty in England has no connection whatever 
with religion. The English, left to their own ingenuity and 
skill, displayed a vast amount of statesmanlike qualities in devis- 
ing for themselves a system of check and counter-check, which 
protected the subject and defined the rights of the ruler ; and 
this gave the nation an undoubted superiority over their neigh- 
bors on the Continent. But it cannot be attributed, except in a 
very remote manner, to the Protestant doctrine of the indepen- 
dence of the human mind. 

Were we to examine the effect which the example of Eng- 
land produced on other nations, we should find that, instead of 
spreading liberty, it was the cause of the diffusion of an unbri- 
dled license under the name of liberalism. 

In England itself, the lower orders of society having been 
kept in ignorance, and consequently in subjection to the ruling 
classes, and the latter finding it to their interest to preserve 
order and stability in the state, no frightful commotions could 
ensue to threaten the destruction of society. 

In Continental countries, the middle and even the lowest 
classes were' more readily caught by doctrines which, when kept 
within due bounds, may be promotive of exterior prosperity, but 
which, pushed to their extremes and logical consequences, may 
embroil the whole nation in revolution and calamities. 

Such has been the case in our own days, and in days imme- 
diately preceding our own ; and England is now experiencing 
the recoil of those convulsions, and seems on the eve of being 
convulsed herself more terribly, perhaps, than any other nation 
has yet been. 

These few reflections must suffice, as to extend them would 
go beyond our present scope. But now comes the question, 
"Why was Ireland unprepared for the reception of Protestantism ? 
why did she reject it absolutely and permanently ? 

According to the theorists who attribute the success of Prot- 
estantism in the ]^orth of Europe to a higher civilization and a 



250 IRELAND UFPEEPARED FOR PEOTESTNFTISM. 

more ardent love of freedom, the contrary characteristics should 
distinguish those nations which remained faithful to the Churchj 
and particularly the Irish. Was the lack of a higher civilization 
and more ardent love for freedom really the cause, then, for Ire- 
land's undergoing so many fearful sacrifices merely for the sake 
of her religion ? 

"We should not dread entering upon a comparison of the 
Scandinavian and Celtic races in these two particular points, as 
they existed at the time of the Tudors. We are confident that 
a detailed survey of both would result in a glorious vindication 
of the Irish character, although, owing to six hundred years of 
cruel wars with Dane and Anglo-lSTorman, the actual prosperity 
of the country was far inferior to that of England. But the out- 
line of so vast a subject must content us here. 

In judging of the elevation of a nation's sentiments, the first 
thing that strikes us is the motive assigned by the Irish repre- 
sentatives for refusing to pass the bill of supremacy. " Eive or 
six changes of religion in twelve years were too much for consci- 
entious people." Such was the answer sent back to Elizabeth, 
and spoken as though easy of comprehension. Had they deemed 
that their language could have been misunderstood, they would 
undoubtedly have expressed themselves in stronger terms. 

Strange that such an obvious and common-sense remark had 
never occurred to the intelligent and highly-civilized members of 
the English Parliament — those ardent lovers of freedom — when 
applied to by a new English monarch to acknowledge and confirm, 
as law, the religious system he had determined to establish ! 

Apparently, then, at this time, Ireland possessed a conscience 
which England either laid no claim on, or made no pretensions to ; 
and it might not be too much to lay this down as the first reason 
why Ireland remained faithful to her religion. In fact, the whole 
history of the period bears out this general observation. The 
subserviency of the proud English aristocracy, of those pretended 
statesmen and legislators, in matters so intimately connected 
with the soul, its convictions and its morality, shows conclu- 
sively that the word " conscience " had no meaning for them, or 
that, if they were aware of the existence of such a thing, they 
made so little account of it that they were ready at all times to 
barter it for position, what they considered honor, and wealth. 

On the other hand, the constant, unshaken, and emphatic re- 
fusal of the Irish to renounce their religion for the novel " specu- 
lations '' of pretended theologians — in reality, heretical teachers 
— at the beck of king or queen ; their willingness to submit to all 
the rigor of extreme penal laws rather than disobey their sense 
of right, proves too well that they possessed a conscience, knew 
what it meant, and resolved to follow it. There is not a single 
fact of their history, general or particular, taking them collec- 



IRELAND UNPREPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 251 

tively as a nation, when, by tlieir actions, tliey spake as one peo- 
ple or individually, wlien priest and friar, great man or mean 
man, cliose to lose position, property, name — life itself — rather 
than be false to their religion and God — which does not prove 
that they owned a conscience and obeyed its voice. 

Can a nation, deprived of this, be esteemed really free and 
truly civilized ? and can a nation which possesses it be consid- 
ered barbarous ? The answer cannot be doubtful, and is of 
itself a suflScient solution of the question under examination. 

But, to come to more special details. The Irish idea of civ- 
ilization was certainly of a very different character from that of 
the English ; but was it the less true ? From the landing of the 
first invasion, the Korman nobles and prelates looked down on 
the invaded people as barbarous and uncouth, as they previously 
looked down upon the Anglo-Saxons. Later on, they spoke of 
the Irish customs as " lewd ; " and, later still, the majority of 
them adopted those " lewd customs." 

If the question be merely one of refinement of outward man- 
ners, and acquaintance with the artificial code established by a 
society with which the Irish, up to that time, had never come in 
contact, the Normans may be granted whatever benefit may ac- 
crue to them from such, though, even here, the Irish chieftains 
might later on compare favorably with their foes. For instance, 
it is doubtful whether Hugh O'Donnell and O'SuUivan Beare, 
one of whom went to Spain, and the other to Portugal — and the 
second, Philip II. commanded to be treated as a Spanish grander 
— were not as courteous and dignified as Cecil or Walsingham, 
or Essex or Paleigh, at the court of Elizabeth. And, if we take 
the case of the descendants of Strongbow's warriors, who became 
"more Irish, than the Irish," there is no reason why we should 
not prefer the manners and bearing of young Gerald Desmond, 
when, after leaving Home, he appeared at the court of Tuscany, 
to those of the young lords who danced at Windsor, under the 
eyes of Henry, with Anne Boleyn. But, treating- the subject 
seriously, and examining it more closely, we may find a necessity 
for reversing the opinion which is too commonly entertained. 

Civilization does not consist only, or chiefly, in refinement of 
manners, but in all things which exalt a nation ; and, after the 
" conscience " of which we have spoken, nothing is so important 
in making a nation civilized as the institutions under which it 
lives. 

The laws are the great index of a people's civilization, chiefiy 
as regards their execution. I^^othing can be more indicative of it 
than the criminal code of a people. 

The law of England at that time compares poorly with the 
Irish compilation known as the " Senchus Mor," which scholars 
have only recently been able to study, and which is being printed 



252 lEELAND UNPEEPARED EOE PEOTESTANTISM. 

as we write, and to be illustrated witli learned notes. From all 
accounts given by competent reviewers, it is clear that wisdom, 
sound judgment, equity, arid Christian feeling, constitute the 
essence of those laws, which Edmund Campian found the young 
Irishmen of his day studying under such strange circumstances 
and with such ardor and application as to spend sixteen or eigh- 
teen years at it. 

And in what manner were those very Christian enactments 
which lay at the foundation of the English legislation executed 
at the same period ? What, for instance, were the features of its 
criminal code ? It is unnecessary to depict what all the world 
knows. 

In extenuation of the barbarous blood-thirstiness which char- 
acterized it, it may be said that torture, cruel punishments, and 
fearful chastisement for slight offences, formed the general feat- 
ures of the criminal code of most Christian nations. They had 
been handed down by barbarous ancestors, the relics of Scandi- 
navian cruelty for the most part, added to the Roman slave pen- 
alties, which were the remnants of pagan inhumanity. This an- 
swer would be insufficient when comparing the English with the 
Brehon law, but it does not hold good even with reference to 
other Continental nations. In no country at that time was pun- 
ishment so pitiless as in England. The details, now well known, 
can only be published for exceptional readers ; to find a compari- 
son for them Dr. Madden says : 

" We must come down to the reign of terror in France, to 
the massacres of September, to the wholesale executions of con- 
ventional times ; to find the mob insulting the victims, and the 
executioner himself adding personal affront to the disgusting ful- 
filment of his horrible office." 

Passing from the laws to the usages of warfare, and chiefly to 
domestic strife, here the most vulnerable point in the Irish char- 
acter shows itself. The constant feuds resulting from the clan 
system furnish a never-failing theme to those who accuse the 
Irish of barbarism. Yet is there no parallel to them in the hor- 
rors of those dynastic revolutions which preceded the Tudors in 
England, and which the Tudors only put an end to by the com- 
pletest despotism, and by shedding the best blood of the country 
in torrents ? The Irish feuds never depopulated the country. It 
is even admitted by most reliable historians that, while those dis- 
sensions were rifest, the land was really teeming with a happy 
people, and rich in every thing which an agricultural country can 
enjoy. The great battles of the various clans resulted often in the 
killing of a few dozen warriors. Such, in fact, was the manner in 
which chroniclers estimated the gains or losses of each of those 
victories or defeats. 

But, in the Wars of the Eoses, England lost a great part of her 



lEELAND UNPEEPAEED FOE PEOTESTANTISM. 253 

adult population ; so much so, that she was altogether incapaci- 
tated from waging war with any external nation. She could not 
even afford to send any reenforcements to the English Pale in 
Ireland — not even a few hundred which at times would have 
proved so serviceable. It was in fact high time and almost a 
happy thing for England that the crushing despotism of the Tu- 
dors came in to save the nation from total ruin. 

Finally, can it be said that the Irish were inferior in civiliza- 
tion to the English by reason of their social habits, when Danes, 
Anglo-Saxons and jNormans, in turn, invariably adopted Irish 
manners in preference to their own, after living a sufficient time 
in the country to be able to appreciate the difference between 
the one and the other ? 

The writers of whom we speak ascribe the spread of Protes- 
tantism not only to a higher civilization, or at least a special apt- 
ness and fitness for it, but also say that it was due to the greater 
love for freedom which possessed those who accepted it ; where- 
as the Irish, as they allege, have been forever priest-ridden and 
cowered under the lash. 

The connection between English Protestantism and freedom 
has been sufficiently touched upon. But in Ireland the whole 
resistance of the Irish people to the change of religion is the 
most conspicuous proof which could be advanced of their inher- 
ent love for freedom.* 

What is the meaning of this word " priest-ridden ? " If, as at- 
tached to the Irish, it means that they have remained faithfully de- 
voted to their spiritual guides, and protected them at cost of life 
and limb against the execution of barbarous laws, this epithet which 
is flung at them as a reproach is a glory to them, and a true one. 

Are they to be accused of cowardice because they were never 
bold enough to demolish a single Catholic chapel— a favorite 
amusement of the English mobs from Elizabeth's reign to Vic- 
toria's — or because they could not find the courage in their hearts 
to mock a martyr at the stake, or imbrue their hands in his blood, 
as did the nation of a higher civilization and a more ardent love 
for freedom ? 

The Irish cower under the lash ! It could never be applied, 
imtil calculating treachery had first rendered them naked and 
defenceless, and removed from their reach every weapon of de- 
fence. And the man who in such a case receives the lash is a 
coward, while he who safely applies it is a hero ! 

Our observations so far have cleared the ground fqr the right 
solution and understanding of the present question. It may now 
be said that the Irish were not prepared for the reception of Prot- 
estantism, and remained firm in their faith because — 

1. They possessed a conscience. 

2. There had existed no religious abuses, worthy of the name, 



254 IRELAND UIsTPEEPARED EOR PROTESTANTISM. 

in their country wMcli called for reform. Sucli abuses had in 
England and Germany furnished the pretext for a change of 
religion. It was a mere pretext, for the alleged abuses might all 
be remedied without intrenching on the domain of faith, and un- 
settling the religious convictions of the whole nation. There is 
no greater crime possible than to introduce among people enjoy- 
ing all the benefits resulting from a firm belief in holy truth a 
simple doubt, a simple hesitating surmise, calcidated to make 
them waver in the least in what had previously been a solid and 
well-grounded faith. But to consider that crime carried to the 
extent of so sapping the foundation of Christian belief as to bring 
about the inevitable consequence of opening under nations the 
fearful abyss of atheism and despair — there is no word sufficient- 
ly strong to express the indignation which such a course of action 
must naturally excite. And that the ultimate result of the new 
heresy was to carry men to the very brink of the abyss is plain 
enough to-day, and was foreseen by Luther himself. In all 
probability he had a clear perception of it, since the latter half of 
his life was devoted to propping up the crumbling walls of his 
hastily-erected edifice by whatever supports he could steal from 
the old faith, and fighting hard against all those who had already 
drawn the ultimate conclusions of his own principles. 

For those, then, who in the sixteenth century set in motion 
the chaos which threatens to overwhelm us* to-day, the religious 
abuses existing at the time can offer no excuse for their destruc- 
tion of Religion, because stains happened to sully the purity of 
her outward garment. 

But in Ireland no such abuses existed; and consequently 
there was there not even a pretext for the introduction of Prot- 
estantism, and by the very reason of their sense of good and 
right the Irish were unprepared for heresy. 

3. Even had it entered into their minds to wish for a reforma- 
tion of some kind, they were certainly unprepared for the one 
offered them. The first reform of the new order was to close 
the religious houses which the people loved, which were the seats 
of learning, holiness, and education. Their Catholic ancestors 
had founded those religious houses ; they themselves enjoyed the 
spiritual and even temporal advantages attached to them, for they 
constituted in fact the only important and useful establishments 
which their country possessed ; they had been consecrated by the 
lives and deaths of a thousand saints within their walls ; and they 
suddenly beheld pretended ministers of a new religion of which 
they knew nothing, backed by ferocious Walloon or English 
troopers, turn out or slay their inmates, close them, set them on 
fire, pillage them, or convert them into private dwellings for the 
convenience of an imported aristocracy. This was the first act 
of the " introduction " of the " Reformation " into Ireland. The 



lEELAND UNPEEPAEED FOE PEOTESTANTISM. 255 

people were enabled to judge of the sanctity of the new creed at 
its lirst appearance among them. And this alone, apart from 
their firm adherence to the faith of their fathers, was qnite 
enough to justify them in their resistance to such a substitute. 

But, above all, when they beheld how the inmates of those 
holy houses were treated, when they saw them cast out into the 
world, penniless, reduced to penury and want, persecuted, de- 
clared outcasts, hunted down, insulted by the soldiery, arrested, 
cruelly beaten, bound hand and foot, and hung np either before 
the door of their burning monastery, or even in the church itself 
before the altar — what wonder that they were unprepared to re- 
ceive the new religion ? 

The barbarity displayed throughout England and Ireland 
toward Catholicism was specially fiendish when directed against 
religious of both sexes ; and, as in Ireland no class of persons was 
more justly and dearly loved, what wonder that the Irish literally 
hated the religion that came to them from beyond the sea ? 

"Without going over the other aspects of the religious ques- 
tion of the time, and comparing article with article of the new 
and old beliefs, this single feature of the case alone is suificient. 
The process might be carried out with advantage, but is not 
necessary. 

4. The new order of things, in one word, resolved itself into 
rapacity and wanton bloodshed. And, despite whatever may be 
said of Irish outrages by those who are never tired of alluding to 
them, Irish nature is opposed to such excesses. If they are ever 
guilty of such, it is only when they have previously been out- 
raged themselves, and in such cases they are the first to repent 
of their action in their cooler moments. On the other hand, the 
men who first set all these outrages going never find reason to 
accuse themselves of any thing, are even perfectly satisfied with 
and convinced of their own perfection ; and, as from the first they 
acted coolly and systematically, their self-equanimity is never dis- 
turbed, they continue unshaken in the calm conviction that they 
have always been in the right, whatever may have been the con- 
sequences of the initiative movement and its steady continuance. 

But we repeat, advisedly — the Irish nature is opposed to ra- 
pacity and wanton shedding of blood, and this formed another 
strong reason for their opposition to the religious revolution 
which immersed them in so bloody a baptism. 

5. Yet perhaps the most radical and real cause of their per- 
sistent refusal to embrace Protestantism lies in their traditional 
spirit, of which we have previously spohen. There is no ration- 
alistic tendency in their character. 

And all the points well considered, which, after all, is the 
better, the simply traditional or strictly rationalistic nature ? 
What has been the result of those philosophical speculations from 



256 IRELAND UNPEEPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 

whicli Protestantism sprang? Whither are men tending to-day 
in consequence of it ? Would it not have been better for man- 
kind to have stood by the time-honored traditions of former ages, 
independently of the strong and convincing claims which Catho- 
licity offers to all ? This is said without in the least attributing 
the fault to sound philosophy, without casting the slightest slur 
on those truly great and illustrious men who have widened the 
limits of the human intellect, and deserved well of mankind by 
the solid truths they have opened up in their works for the bene- 
fit and instruction of minds less gifted than their own. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

THE lEISH AND THE STUAETS. LOYALTY AND CONFISCATION. 

Upon tlie death of Elizabeth, in 1603, the son of the unfor- 
tunate Mary Stuart was called to the throne of England, and for 
the first time in their history the Irish people accepted English 
rule, gave their willing submission to an English dynasty, and 
afterward displayed as great devotedness in supporting the fall- 
ing cause of their new monarchs, as in defending their religion 
and nationality. 

This feeling of allegiance, born so suddenly and strangely in 
the Irish breast, cherished so ardently and at the price of so many 
sacrifices, finally raising the nation to the highest pitch of hero- 
ism, is worth studying and investigating its true cause. 

"What ought to have been the natural efliect produced on the 
Irish people by the arrival of the news that James of Scotland 
had succeeded to Elizabeth ? The first feeling must have been 
one of deep relief that the hateful tyranny of the Tudors had 
passed away, to be supplanted by the rule of their kinsmen the 
Stuarts — kinsmen, because the Scottish line of kings was directly 
descended from that Dal Riada colony which Ireland had sent 
so long ago to the shores of Albania, to a branch of which Co- 
lumbkill belonged. 

For those who were not sufficiently versed in antiquarian gen- 
ealogy to trace his descent so far back, the thought that James 
was the son of Mary Stuart was sufficient. If any people could 
sympathize with the ill-starred Queen of Scots, that people was 
the Irish. It could not enter into their ideas that the son of the 
murdered Catholic queen should have feelings uncongenial to 
their own. It is easy, then, to understand how, when the news of 
Elizabeth's death and of the accession of James arrived, the san- 
guine Irish heart leaped with a new hope and joyful expectation. 

As for the real disposition of that strangest of monarchs, 
James I., writers are at variance. Matthew O'Connor, the 
elder, who had in his hands the books and manuscripts of Charles 
O'Connor of Bellingary, is very positive in his assertions on his 
side of the question : 
17 



258 THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 

"James was a determined and implacable enemy to the 
Catholic religion ; he alienated his professors from all attachment 
to his government by the virulence of his antipathy. One of his 
first gracious proclamations imported a general jail-delivery, 
except for 'mnrderers and pai3ists.' By another proclamation 
he pledged himself 'never to grant any toleration to the 
Catholics,' and entailed a cm-se on his posterity if they granted 
any." 

Turning now to Dr. Madden's " History of the Penal Laws," 
we shall feel disposed to modify so positive an opinion. There 
we read : 

" It is very evident that his zeal for the Protestant Church 
had more to do with a hatred of the Puritans than of popery, 
and that he had a hankering, after all, for the old religion which 
his mother belonged to, and for which she had been persecuted 
by the fanatics of Scotland." 

Hume seems to support this judgment of Dr. Madden when 
he says that " the principles of James would have led him to ear- 
nestly desire a unity of faith of the Churches which had been 
separated." 

Both opinions, however, agree in the long-run, since Dr. 
Madden is obliged to confess that "new measures of severity, as 
the bigotry of the times became urgent, were wrung from the 
timid king. He had neither moral nor political courage." 

Still, on the day of his coronation, the Irish could little 
imagine what was in store for them at the hands of the son of 
Mary Stuart ; hence their great rejoicing, till the first stroke of 
bitter disappointment came to open their eyes, and awaken them 
to the hard reality. This was the flight of Tyrone and Tyrcon- 
nell, which had been brought about by treachery and low cun- 
ning. These chieftains were, as they deserved to be, the idols 
of the nation. They were compelled to fly because, as Dr. 
Anderson, a Protestant minister, says, " artful Cecil had em- 
ployed one St. Lawrence to entrap the Earls of Tyrone and Tyr- 
connell, the Lord of Devlin, and other Irish chiefs, into a sham 
plot which had no evidence but his." 

The real cause of their flight was that adventurers and "un- 
dertakers" desired to "plant" Ulster, though the flnal treaty 
with Mount] oy had left both earls in possession of their lands. 
That treaty yielded not an acre of plunder, and was consequent- 
ly in English eyes a failure. The long, bloody, and promising 
wars of Elizabeth's reign had ended, after all, in forcing coronets 
on the brows of O'lSTeill and O'Donnell, with a royal deed added, 
securing to them their lands, and freedom of worship to all the 
north. 

James was met by the importunate demand for land. O'l^eill, 
O'Donnell, and several other Irish chieftains, were sacrificed to 



THE IRISH AND THE STUAETS. , 259 

meet this demand ; they were compelled to fly ; and they had 
scarcely gone when millions of acres in Ulster were declared 
to be forfeited to the crown, and thrown open for "planting.'^ 

And here a new featm-e in confiscation presents itself, which 
was introduced by the first of the Stuart dynasty, and proved far 
more galling to Irishmen than any thing they had yet encoun- 
tered in this shape. 

In the invasion led by Strongbow, in the absorption of the 
Kildare estates by Henry YIII., in the annexation of King's and 
■ Queen's Counties under Philip and Mary, even in the last ''plan- 
tation " of Munster by Elizabeth's myrmidons at the end of the 
Desmond war, the land had been immediately distributed among 
the chief officers of the victorious armies. The conquered knew 
that such would be the law of war ; the great generals and 
courtiers who came into possession scarcely disturbed the tenants. 
A few of the great native and Anglo-Irish families sufiered 
sorely from the spoliation ; the people at large scarcely felt it, 
except by the destruction of clanship and the introduction of 
feudal grievances. Moreover, the new proprietors were inter- 
ested in making their tenants happy, and not unfrequently 
identified themselves with the people — becoming in course of 
time trae Irishmen. 

But, with the accession of the first of the Stuarts to the 
English throne, a great alteration took place in the disposal of 
the land throughout Ireland. 

The Tyrone war had ended five years before, and those who 
had taken part in the conflict had already received their portion ; 
the vanquished, of misfortune — the conquerors, of gain. James 
brought in with him from Scotland a host of greedy followers ; 
and all, from first to last, expected to rise with their king into 
wealth and honor. England was not wide enough to hold them, 
nor rich enough to satiate their appetites. The puzzled but 
crafty king saw a way out of his difficulties in Ireland. He no 
longer limited the distribution of land in that country to soldiers 
and officers of rank chiefly. He gave it to Scotch adventurers, 
to London trades companies. He settled it on Protestant 
colonies whose first use of their power was to evict the former 
tenants or clansmen, and thus efi'ect a complete change in the 
social aspect of the north. 

Well did they accomplish the task assigned them. Ulster 
became a Protestant colony, and the soil of that province has 
ever since remained in the hands of a people alien to the 
country. 

Yet the Ulstermen had been led to believe that James pur- 
posed securing them in their possessions ; for, according to Mr. 
Prendergast, in his Introduction to the "Cromwellian settle- 
ment : " 



260 THE lEISH AND THE STUAETS. 

'^ On the ITtli of July, 1607, Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord- 
Deputy, accompanied by Sir John Davies and other commis- 
sioners, proceeded to Ulster, with powers to inquire what land 
each man held. There appeared hefore them, in each county 
they visited, the chief lords and Irish gentlemen, the heads of 
creaghts, and the common people, the Brehons and Shanachies, 
who knew all the septs and families, and took upon themselves 
to tell what quantity of land every man ought to have. They 
thus ascertained and booked their several lands, and the Lord- 
Deputy promised them estates in them. ' He thus,' says Sir 
John Davies, ^ made it a year of jubilee to the poor inhabitants, 
because every man was to return to his own house, and be 
restored to his ancient possessions, and they all went home 
I'ejoicing.' 

" Notwithstanding these promises, the king, in the following 
year, issued his scheme for the plantation of Ulster, urged to it, 
it would seem, by Sir Arthur Chichester, who so largely profited 

by it It could not be said that the flight of the earls 

gave occasion for this change, inasmuch as the king, immediately 
after, issued a proclamation — which he renewed on taking pos- 
session of both earls' territories — assuring the inhabitants that 
they should be protected and preserved in their estates." 

It looks, indeed, as though the whole transaction, including 
the promises and the call for ascertaining the quantity of land 
occupied by each inhabitant, as also the sham plot into which 
the earls were inveigled, was but a cunning device to bring 
about the plantation, in which manors of one thousand, fifteen 
hundred, and three thousand acres, were ofiered to such Eng- 
lish and Scotch as should undertake to plant their lots with 
British Protestants, and engage that no Irish should dwell upon 
them. Meanwhile, all who had been in arms during Tyrone's 
war were to be transplanted with their families, cattle, and fol- 
lowers, to waste places in Munster and Connaught, and there set 
down at a distance from one another. 

Over and above this, the Irish were indebted to James for a 
new project — a most ingenious invention for successful plunder. 
He, was the real author of the celebrated " Commission for the 
investigation of defective titles." 

It would seem that the province of Ulster was too small for 
the rapacity of those who were constantly urging upon the king 
a greater thoroughness in his plans. It was clear, moreover, 
that the English occupation of the other three provinces had 
hitherto proved a failure. The island had failed to become An- 
glicised, and it was necessary to begin the work anew. 

The new commission was presented to the Irish peoj)le in a 
most alluring guise. That political hypocrisy, which to-day 
stands for statesmanship, is not a growth of our own times. The 



THE lEISII AND THE STUARTS. 261 

intention of James confined itself to putting an end to all uncer- 
tainty on the subject of titles, and bestowing on each land-owner 
one which, for the future, should be unimpeachable. But the 
result went beyond his intention. This measure became, in fact, 
an engine of universal spoliation. It failed to secure even those 
who succeeded in retaining a portion of their former estates in 
possession, as Strafford made manifest, who, despite all the un- 
impeachable titles conferred by James, managed to confiscate to 
his own profit the greater part of the province of Cod naught. 

It is fitting to give a few details of this new measure of 
James, in order to show the gratitude which the Irish owed the 
Stuarts, if on that account only. In "Ireland under English 
Rule," the Rev. A. Perraud justly remarks : " Most Irish families 
held possession of their lands but by tradition, and their rights 
could not be proved by regular title-deeds. By royal command, 
a general inquiry was instituted, and whoever could not prove 
his right to the seat of his ancestors, by authentic documents, 
was mercilessly but juridically despoiled of it ; the pen of the 
lawyer thus making as many conquests as the blade of the mer- 
cenary." 

The advisers of James — those who aided him in this scheme 
— were fully alive to its efficiency in serving their ends. A few 
years previously, Arthur Chichester and Sir John Davies had 
only to consult the Brehon lawyers and the chroniclers of the 
tribes, whose duty it was to become thoroughly acquainted with 
the limits of the various territories, and keep the records in their 
memory, in order to procure from the Ulster men the proofs of 
their rights to property. Up to that time the word of those who 
were authorized, by custom, to pronounce on such subjects, was 
law to every Irishman. And, indeed, the verdict of these was 
all-sufficient, inasmuch as the task was not overtaxing to the 
memory of even an ordinary man, since it consisted in remem- 
bering, not the landed property of each individual, but the limits 
of the territory of each clan. 

The clan territories were as precisely marked off as in any 
Em'opean state to-day ; and, if any change in frontier occurred, it 
was the result of war between the neighboring clans, and there- 
fore known to all. To suppose, then, under such a state of land 
tenure, that the territory of the Maguire clan, for instance, be- 
longed exclusively to Maguire, and that he could prove his title 
to the property by legal documents, was erroneous — in fact, such 
a thing was impossible. Yet, such was the ground on which the 
king based his establishment of the odious commission. 

The measure meant nothing less than the simple spoliation 
of all those who came under its provisions at the time. Matthew 
O'Connor has furnished some instances of its workings, which 
may bring into stronger light the enormity of such an atterhpt : 



262 THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 

" The immense possessions of Biyan na Murtlia O'Rom'ke 
had been granted to his son Teige,' by patent, in the first year of 
the king's reign, and to the heirs male of his body. Teige died, 
leaving several sons ; their titles were clear; no plots or con- 
spiracies could be urged to invalidate them. By the medium of 
those inquisitions, they were found, one and all, to be bastards. 
The eldest son, Bryan O'Rourke, was put off with a miserable 
pension, and detained in England lest he should claim his inher- 
itance. Yet, in this case, the title was actually in existence. 

" In the county of Longford, three-fourths of nine hundred and 
ninety-nine cartrons, the property of the OTarrells, were granted 
to adventurers, to the undoing and beggary of that princely 
family. Twenty-five of the septs were dispossessed of their all, 
and to the other septs were assigned mountainous and barren 
tracts about one-fourth of their former possessions. 

" The O'Byrnes, of Wicklow, were robbed of their property 
by a conspiracy unparalleled even in the annals of those times ; 
fabricated charges of treason, perjury, and even legal murder, 
were employed ; and, though the innocence of those victims of 
rapacious oppression was established, yet they were never re- 
stored," 

With regard to the Anglo-Irish, and even such of the na- 
tives as had consented to accept titles from the English kings, 
those titles, some of which went back as far as Strongbow's 
invasion, were brought under the "inquiry" of the new com- 
mission — with what result may be imagined. An astute legist 
can discover flaws in the best-drawn legal papers. In the eye 
of the law, the neglect of recording is fatal ; and it was 
proved that many proprietors, whose titles had been bestowed 
by Henry YIIl. and Elizabeth, were not recorded, simply by 
bribing the clerks who were charged with the ofiice of recording 
them. 

This portion of our subject must present strange features to 
readers acquainted with the laws concerning property which ob- 
tain among civilized • nations. In making the necessary studies 
for this most imperfect sketch, the writer has been surprised at 
finding that not one of the authors whom he has consulted has 
spoken of any thing beyond the cruelty of compelling Irish land- 
owners to exhibit title-deeds, which it was known they did not 
and could not possess. Not a single one has ever said a word 
of " prescription ; " yet, this alone was enough to arrest the pro- 
ceedings of any English ' court, if it followed the rules of law 
which govern civilized communities. 

Most of the estates, then declared to be escheated to the king, 
had been in possession of the families to which the holders 
belonged, for (Jenturies ; we may go so far, in the case of some 
Irish* families and tribes, as to say for thousands of years. But, 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 263 

to disturb property wliicli has been lield for even less than a 
century, would convulse any nation subjected to such a revolu- 
tionary process. 'No country in the world could stand such a 
test; it would loosen in a day all the- bonds that hold society 
together. 

If the commission set on foot by James did not go to the 
extreme lengths to which it was carried by those who came after 
him, he it was who established what bore the semblance of a 
legal precedent for the excesses of Strafford, nnder Charles I., 
which reached their utmost limits in the hands of Cromwell's 
parliamentary commissioners. James set the engine of destruc- 
tion in action : they worked it to its end. The Irish might 
justly lay at his door all the woes which ensued to them from the 
principles emanating from him. Even during his reign they 
saw, with instinctive horror, the abyss which he had opened np to 
swallow all their inheritance. The first commission of James 
commenced its operations by reporting three hundred and eighty- 
five thousand acres in Lein'ster alone as "discovered," inasmuch 
as the titles " were not such as ought " (in their judgment) " to 
stand in the way of his Majesty's designs." 

Hence, long before the death of James, all the hopes which 
his accession had raised in the minds of the Irish had vanished.; 
yet, strange to say, they were not cured of their love for the 
Stuart dynasty. They hailed the coming of Charles, the husband 
of a Catholic jprincess, with joy. His marriage took place a year 
previous to the death of his father ; and, to know that Henrietta 
of France was to be their queen, was enough to assure the Irish 
that, henceforth, they would enjoy the freedom of their religion. 
The same motive always awakes in them hope and joy. Men 
may smile at such an idea, but it is with a profound respect for 
the Irish character that such a sentence is written. Hope of 
religious freedom is the noblest sentiment which can move the 
breast of man ; and if there be reason for admiration in the 
motive which urges men to fight and die for their firesides and 
families, how much more so in that which causes them to set 
above all their altars and their God ! 

This time their hope seemed well-founded ; for the treaty 
concluded between England and France conferred the right on 
the Catholic princess of educating her children by this marriage 
till the age of thirteen. And, in addition, conditions favorable 
to th'e English Catholics were inserted in the same treaty. 

But people were not then aware of the reason for the inser- 
tion of those conditions. Hume, later on, being better ac- 
quainted with what at the time was a secret, states in his history 
that " the court of England always pretended, even in the me- 
morials to the French court, that all the conditions favorable to 
the English Catholics were inserted in the marriage treaty merely 



264 THE lEISH AND THE STUAETS. 

to please tlie Pope, and that tlieir strict execution was, by an 
agreement witli France, secretly dispensed with." 

The Irish rejoiced, however ; and Charles and his ministers 
encouraged their expectations. Lord Falkland, in the name of 
the king, promised that, if the Catholic lords should present 
Charles, who needed money, with a voluntary tribute, he would 
in return grant them certain immunities and protections, which 
acquired later on a great celebrity under the name of " graces." 

The chief of these were — to allow " recusants " to practise in 
the courts of law, and to sue out the livery of their land, merely 
on taking an act of civil allegiance instead of the oath of suprem- 
acy ; that the claims of the crown should be limited to the last 
sixty years — a period long enough in all conscience ; and that 
the inhabitants of Connaught should be allowed to make a new 
enrolment of their estates, to be accepted by the king. A Par- 
liament was promised to sit in a short time, in order to confirm 
all these " graces." 

The subsidy promised by the Irish lords amounted to the 
then enormous sum of forty thousand pounds sterling, to be paid 
annually for three years. Two-thirds of it was paid, according 
to Matthew O'Connor, but no one of the "graces" was forth- 
coming, the king finding he had promised more than he could 
perform. 

Instead of enabling the land-owners of Connaught to obtain 
a new title by a new enrolment, Strafibrd, with the connivance 
of Charles, devised a project which would have enabled the king 
to dispose of the whole province to the enriching of his exchequer. 
This project consisted in throwing open the whole territory to 
the court of " defective titles." To legalize this spoliation, the 
jparchment grant, five hundred years old, given to Eoderic 
O'Connor and Richard de Burgo, by Henry II., was set up as 
rendering invalid the claims of immemorial possession by the 
Irish, although confirmed by recent compositions. 

In the counties of Eoscommon, Mayo, and Sligo, juries were 
found for the crown. The honesty and courageous resistance of 
a Galway jury prevented the carrying out of the measure in that 
county. Strafibrd resented this rebuft" deeply ; and the brave 
Galway jurors were punished without mercy for their " contu- 
macy," for they had been told openly to find for the king. Com- 
pelled to appear in the Castle chamber, they were each fined 
four thousand pounds, their estates seized, and themselves im- 
prisoned until their fines should be paid ; while the sherifi', who 
was also fined to the same amount, not being able to pay, died 
in prison. Such were a few of the "graces" granted the Irish 
on the accession of Charles I. 

Meanwhile, the king's difliculties with his English subjects 
drove him to turn for hope to the Scotch, upon whom he had 



THE IRISH AND THE STUAETS. 265 

attempted to force Episcopalianism. The resistance of the 
Scotch, and the celebrated Covenant by which they bound them- 
selves, are well known. Charles, finally, granted the Covenanters 
not only liberty of conscience, but even the religious supremacy 
of Presbyterianism, paying their army, moreover, for a portion 
of the time it passed under service in the rebellion against him- 
self. 

The example of the Scotch was certainly calculated to in- 
flame the Irish with ardor, and drive them likewise into rebel- 
lion. What was the oppression of Scotland compared to that 
under which Ireland had so long groaned ? Surely the final 
attempt of the chief minister of Charles to rob them of the one 
province which had hitherto escaped, was enough to open their 
eyes, and convert their faith in the Stuart dynasty into hatred 
and determined opposition. Yet were they on the eve of car- 
rying their devotion to this faithless and worthless line to the 
height of heroism. The generosity of the nature which is in 
them could find an excuse for Charles. " He would have done 
us right," they thought, " had he been left free." From the 
rebellion of his subjects, in England and Scotland, they could 
only draw one conclusion — that he was the victim of Puritan- 
ism, for which they could entertain no feeling but one of horror; 
and it is a telling fact that their attachment to their religion 
kept them faithful to the sovereign to whom they had sworn 
their allegiance, however unworthy he might be. 

Thus in the famous rising of 1641, when in one night Ireland, 
with the exception of a few cities, freed herself from the oppress- 
or (the failure of the plan in Dublin being the only thing which 
prevented a complete success ; the English of the Pale still refus- 
ing to combine with the Irish), the native Irish alone, left to their 
own resources, proclaimed emphatically in explicit terms their 
loyalty to the king, whom they credited with a just and toler- 
ant disposition, if freed from the restraints imposed upon him by 
the Puritanical faction. A further fact stranger still, and still 
more calculated to shake their confidence in the monarch, oc- 
curred shortly after, which indeed raises the loyalty of the nation 
to a height inconceivable and impossible to any people, unless one 
whose conscience is swayed by the sense of stern duty. 

When the Scottish Covenanters, whose rebellion had secured 
them in possession of all they demanded, heard of the Irish 
movement, they were at once seized with a fanatical zeal urging 
them to stamp out the Irish " Popish rebellion." King Charles, 
who was then in Edinburgh, expressed his gratification at their 
proposal, and no time was lost in shipping a force of two thou- 
sand Scots across the Channel. They landed at Antrim, when 
they began those frightful massacres which opened by driving 
into the sea three thousand Irish inhabitants of the island Magee. 



266 THE IRISH AM) THE STUAETS. 

Wlien, according to M. O'Connor's "IrisTi Catholics," "letters 
conveying the news of the intended invasion of the Scots were 
intercepted ; when the speeches of leading members in the Eng- 
lish Commons, the declaration of the Irish Lord-Justices, and of 
the principal members of the Dublin Council, countenanced those 
rumors ; when Mr. Pjm gave out that he would not leave a Pa- 
pist in Ireland ; when Sir William Parsons declared that within 
a twelvemonth not a Catholic should be seen in the whole coun- 
try ; when Sir John Clot worthy affirmed that the conversion of 
the Papists was to be eifected with the Bible in one hand and 
the sword in the other," and the King all the while seemed to 
allow and consent to it, the Irish were not in the least dismayed 
by those rumors, but set about establishing in the convulsed 
island a sort of order in the name of God and the king ! 

Then for the first time did native and Anglo-Irish Catholics 
take common side in a common cause. This was the union 
which Archbishop Browne had foreseen, which had shown itself 
in symptoms from time to time, but which had oftener been 
broken by the old animosity. But, at last, convinced that the 
only party on which they could rely, and the party which truly 
supported the reigning dynasty, was that of the Ulster chiefs, 
the Catholic lords of the Pale threw themselves heart and soul 
into it, and, under the guidance of the Catholic bishops who then 
came forward, together they formed the celebrated " Confedera- 
tion of Kilkenny " in 1642. 

Had Charles ev^en then possessed the courage, honesty, or wis- 
dom to recognize and acknowledge his true friends, he might 
have been spared the fate which overtook him ; but all he did 
was almost to break up the only coalition which stood up boldly 
in his favor. 

A circumstance not yet touched uj)on meets us here. Prot- 
estantism was at this time effecting a complete change in the 
rules of judgment and conduct which men had hitherto fol- 
lowed. In place of the old principles of political morality wliich 
up to this period had regulated the actions of Christians, notions 
of independence, of subversion of existing governments, of rev- 
olutions in Church and state, were for the first time in Christian 
history scattered broadcast through the world, and beginning 
that series of catastrophes which has made European history 
since, and which is far from being exhausted yet. The Irish 
stood firm by the old principles, and, though they became victims 
to their fidelity, they never shrank from the consequences of 
what they knew to be their duty, and to those principles they 
remain faithful to-day. 

To return from this short digression : The Irish hierarchy, 
the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish lords of the Pale, had 
combined together to form the '' Confederation of Kilkenny," in 



THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 267 

wliicli confederation lay the germ of a truly great nation. Early 
in the struggle the Catholic hierarchy saw that it was for them 
to take the initiative in the movement, and they took it in right 
earnest. They could not be impassive spectators when the ques- 
tion at issue was the defence of the Catholic religion, joined this 
time with the rights of their monarch. They met in provincial 
synod at Kells, where, after mature deliberation, the cause of 
the confederates, "God and the king," freedom of worship and 
loyalty to the legitimate sovereign, was declared just and holy, 
and, after lifting a warning voice against the barbarities which 
had commenced on both sides, and ordaining the abolition and 
oblivion of all distinctions between native Irish and old English, 
they took measures for convoking a national synod at Kilkenny. 

It met on the 10th of May, 1643. An oath of association 
bound all Catholics throughout the land. It was ordained that 
a general assembly comprising all the lords spiritual and tem- 
poral and the gentry should be held ; that the assembly should 
select members from its body to represent the different provinces 
and principal cities, to be called the Supreme Council, which 
should sit from day to day, dispense justice, appoint to offices, and 
carry on the executive government of the country. 

Meanwhile the Irish abroad, the exiles, had heard of the 
movement, and several prominent chieftains came back to take 
part in the struggle ; while those who remained away helped the 
cause by gaining the aid' of the Catholic sovereigns, and sending 
home all the funds and munitions of war they could procure. 
Among these, one of the most conspicuous was the learned Luke 
"Wadding, then at Home engaged in writing his celebrated works, 
who dispatched money and arms contributed by the Holy Eather. 
John B. Einuccini, Archbishop of Eermo, sent by the Pope as 
[N^uncio, sailed in the same ship which conveyed those contribu- 
tions to Ireland. 

The Catholic prelates thus originated a free government with 
nothing revolutionary in its character, but combining some of the 
forms of the old Irish Feis with the chief features of modern 
parliamentary governments. Matthew O'Connor makes the fol- 
lowing just observations on this subject in his " Irish Catholics : " 

" The duty of obedience to civil government was so deeply 
impressed on the Catholic mind, at this period, in Ireland, that 
It degenerated into passive submission. These impressions ori- 
ginated in religious zeal, and were fostered by persecution. The 
spiritual authority of the clergy was found requisite to soften 
those notions, and temper them with ideas of the constitutional, 
social, and Christian right of resistance in self-defence. The no- 
bility and gentry fully concurred in those proceedings of the 
clergy, and the nation afterward ratified them in a genei-al con- 
vention held at Kilkenny, in the subsequent month of October. 



268 THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 

The national union seemed to be at last cemented by the wishes 
of all orders, and the interests of all parties." 

The fact is, the nation had been brought to life, and took 
its stand on a new footing. "When the general assembly met, 
in October, eleven bishops and fourteen lay lords formed what 
may be called the Irish peerage; two hundred and twenty- 
six commoners represented the large majority of the Irish 
constituencies ; a great lawyer of the day, Patrick Darcy, was 
elected chancellor ; and a Supreme Council of six members 
from each province constituted what may be called the Ex- 
ecutive. 

This government, which really ruled Ireland without any in- 
terference until Ormond succeeded in breaking it up, was obeyed 
and acknowledged throughout the land. It undertook and car- 
ried out all the functions of its high office, such as the coining of 
money, appointing circuit judges, sending ambassadors abroad, 
and commissioning officers to direct the operations of the na- 
tional army. Among these latter, one name is sufficient to 
vouch for their efficiency : that of Owen Hoe O'Keill, who had 
returned, with many others, from the Continent, in the July of 
that year, and formally assumed the command of the army of 
Ulster. 

Owen Roe O'Neill was grand-nephew to Hugh of Tyrone. 
Unknown, even now, to Europe, his name still lives in the 
memory of his coantrymen. " The head of the Hy-JSTiall race, 
the descendant of a hundred kings, the inheritor of their virtues, 
without a taint of their vices, he would have deserved a crown, 
and, on a larger theatre, would have acquired the title of a 
hero." — {M. O'Connor.) 

Had Charles recognized this government, which proclaimed 
him king, discharged from office the traitors, Borlase and Par- 
sons, who plotted against him, and not surrendered his authority 
to Ormond, Ireland would probably have been saved from the 
horrors impending, and Charles himself from the scaffold. What- 
ever the issue might have been, the fact remains that the Irish 
then proved they could establish a solid government of their 
own, and that it is an altogether erroneous idea to imagine them 
incapable of governing themselves. 

It is impossible to enter here upon the details of the intricate 
complications which ensued — complications which were chiefly 
owing to the plots of Ormond ; but, it may be stated fearlessly 
that, the more the history of those times is studied, the more cer- 
tainly is the "national" party, with the IS'uncio Rinuccini for 
head and director, recognized as the one which, better than any 
other, could have saved Ireland. At least, no true Irishman will 
now pretend that the " peace party," headed by Ormond, which 
was pitted against the " ISTuncionists," could bring good to the 



THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 269 

country ; on tlie contrary, its subsequent misfortunes are to be 
ascribed directly to it. 

To stigmatize it as it deserves, needs no more tban to say that 
among its chief leaders were Ormond, its head and projector, and 
Murrough O'Brien, of Inchiquin, to this day justly known as 
Murrough of the burnings. These two men were the product 
of the " refined policy " of England to hill Catholicism in the 
higher classes by the operation of one of the laws that governed 
the oppressed nation — wardship. 

Both Inchiquin and Ormond were born of Catholic fathers, 
and all their relations, during their lives, remained Catholics. 
But, their fathers dying during the minority of both, the law took 
their education out of the hands of the nearest kin, to give it to 
English Protestant wardens, in the name of the king, who was 
supposed by the law to be their legitimate guardian. This was 
one of the fruits of feudalism. They were duly brought up by 
these wardens in the Protestant religion, and received a Prot- 
estant education. They grew up, fully impressed with the idea 
that the country which gave them birth was a barbarous coun- 
try ; the parents to whom they owed their lives were idolaters ; 
and their fellow-countrymen a set of villains, only fitted to be- 
come, and forever remain, paupers and slaves. 

There is no exaggeration in these expressions, as anybody 
must concede who has studied the opinions and prejudices enter- 
tained by the English with regard to the Irish, from that period 
down almost to our own days. At any rate, to one acquainted 
with the workings of the " Court of Wards," there is nothing 
surprising in the fact that Ormond, the descendant of so many 
illustrious men of the great Butler family — a family at all times 
so attached to the Catholic faith, and which afterward furnished 
so many victims to the transplantation schemes of Cromwell — 
should himself become an inveterate enemy to the religion of his 
own parents, and to those who professed it ; and that he should 
employ the great gifts which God had granted him, solely to 
scheme against this religion, and prevent his native countrymen 
from receiving even the scanty advantages which Charles at one 
time was willing to concede to them, through Lord Glanmorgan. 

It was Ormond who prevented the execution of the treaty 
between that lord and the confederates, the provisions of which 
were — 

1. The Catholics of Ireland were to enjoy the free and public 
exercise of their religion. 

2. They were to hold, and have secure for their use, all the 
•Catholic churches not then in actual possession of Protestants. 

3. They were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Prot- 
estant clergy. 

But, thanks to his education, such provisions were too much 



270 THE lEISH A^B THE STUAETS. 

for Ormond, the son of a Catliolic father, and whose mother, at 
the very time living a pious and excellent life, would have re- 
joiced to see those advantages secured to her Church and herself, 
in common with the rest of her countrymen and women. 

In like manner, Murrough O'Brien, the Baron of Inchiquin, 
the descendant of so many Catholic kings and saints, whose name 
was a glory in itself, and so closely linked to the Catholic glories 
of the island, was converted, by the education which he had re- 
ceived, into a most cruel oppressor of the Church of his baptism, 
flis expeditions, through the same country which his ancestors 
had ruled, were characterized by all the barbarities practised at 
the time by Munro, Coote, and all the parliamentary leaders of 
the Scotch Puritans, and would have fitted him as a worthy 
compeer of Cromwell and Ireton, who were soon to follow. The 
name of Cashel and its cathedral, where he murdered so many 
priests, women, and children, around the altar adorned by the 
great and good Cormac McCullinan, w^ould alone suffice to hand 
his name down to the execration of posterity. 

Ormond and Murrough being the two chiefs of the "peace 
party," what wonder that the prelates, who had so earnestly 
labored at the formation of the Kilkenny Confederation, and the 
^Nuncio at their head, refused to have aught to do with projects 
in which such men were concerned, when it is borne in mind 
also that several provisions of that " peace treaty " were directly 
opposed to the oath taken by the Confederates ? But, unfortu- 
nately, Ormond was a skilful diplomat, had been dispatched by 
the king, and was supposed to be carrying out the ideas sug- 
gested to him by the unhappy monarch. His representations, 
therefore, could not fail to carry weight, priucipally with the 
Anglo-Irish lords of the Pale, many of whom, influenced by his 
courtly manners and address, declared openly for the proposed 
" peace." 

Thus did the peace sow the germs of division and even war 
among the Irish. The unity among the Catholics, so full of 
promise, was soon broken up ; and those who had met each 
other in such a brotherly spirit in the day when the native chiefs 
and Anglo -Irish lords assembled together at Tara, who swore 
then that the division of centuries should exist no longer, began 
to look upon each other again as enemies. Without going at 
length into the vicissitudes of those various contentions, it is 
enough to say that in the end war broke out between those who 
had so recently taken the oath of confederation together. Owen 
Poe O'lSTeill, the victor of Benburb, and the only man who 
could direct the Irish armies, was attacked by Preston and other 
lords of the Pale, and died, as some historians allege, of poison 
administered to him by one of them. 

This was the result of the intrigues of Ormond ; neverthe- 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 271 

less, Charles continued to place confidence in him, and though he 
had been twice obliged to resign his lieutenancy, and once to fly 
the country, the infatuated sovereign sent him back once more. 

It was only at the end of the struggle, when the ill-fated king 
was at length in the hands of his enemies, that Ormond could be 
brought to consent to conditions acceptable to the national 
party. But then it was too late ; the parliamentary forces had 
carried every thing before them in England ; England was 
already republican to the core ; and the armies which had been 
employed against the Cavaliers, once the eftbrts of the latter 
had ceased with the death of the king, were at liberty to leave 
the country, now submissive to parliamentary rule, and cross 
over to Ireland, with Cromwell at their head, to crush out the 
nation almost, and concentrate on that fated soil, within the 
short space of nine months, all the horrors of past centuries. 

By the death of Owen Koe O'Keill just at that time, Ireland 
was left without a leader fit to cope with the great republican 
general. The country had already been devastated by Coote, 
Munro, St. Leger, and other Scotch and English Puritans ; but 
the massacres which, until the coming of Cromwell, had been, 
at least, only local and checked by the troops of Owen Koe, 
soon extended throughout the island, unarrested by any forces 
in the field. The Cromwellian soldiers, not content with the 
character of warriors, came as " avengers of the Lord," to destroy 
an " idolatrous people." 

That their real design was to exterminate the nation, and use 
the opportunity which then presented itself for that purpose, 
there can be no doubt. It was only after a fair trial that the 
project was found to be impossible, and that other expedients 
were devised. Coote had previously acted with this design in 
view, as is now an ascertained fact, and had been encouraged in 
the course he pursued by the Dublin government.^ The same 
be might shown of St. Leger, in Munster, toward the beginning 
of the insurrection. At all events, all doubt in the matter, if any 
existed, ceased with the landing of Cromwell in 1649, when the 
real object of the war at once showed itself everywhere. 

The result of this man's policy has been painted by Yille- 
main, in his " Histoire de Cromwell^'' in a sentence : " Ireland 
became a desert which the few remaining inhabitants described 
by the mournful saying, ' There was not water enough to drown a 
man, not wood enough to hang him, not earth enough to bury 
him.' " 

The French writer attributes to the whole island what was 
said of only a part of it. To this day, the name of Cromwell is 
justly execrated in Ireland, and " the curse of Cromwell " is one 

^ See Matthew O'Connor's " Irish Catholics." 



272 THE lEISH AIs^D THE STUAETS. 

of tlie bitterest whicli can be invoked npon a person's bead. 
But, at present, tbe fidelity of tbe Irisb to the Stuarts concerns 
us, and a few reflections will put it in a strong but true ligbt 
before us. 

Ever since tbe restoration of Cbarles II., many Englishmen 
bave professed great reverence for tbe memory of tbe " martyr- 
king." Even tbe subsequent Revolution of 1688 left tbe monu- 
ment erected to bim untoucbed. Many Britisb families con- 
tinued steady in tbeir devotion to tbe Scotcb line, and tbe name 
of Jacobite was for them a title of honor. Yet what were tbeir 
sufferings for tbe cause of the king during his struggle with the 
Parliament, and after his execution ? A few noblemen lost their 
lives and estates ; some went into exile and followed tbe fortunes 
of the Pretenders who tried to gain possession of tbe throne. 
But tbe bulk of tbe nation — ^England — may be said to bave suf- 
fered nothing by the great revolution which led to the Common- 
wealth. On the contrary, it is acknowledged that the adminis- 
tration of Cromwell at least brought peace to the country, and 
raised the power of Great Britain to a higher eminence in 
Europe than it had ever known before. As usual, tbe English 
made great profession of loyalty, but, as a rule, were particu- 
larly careful that no great inconvenience should come to them 
from it. 

Treated with contempt and distrust by Charles and bis 
advisers, so insulted in every thing that was dear to her that it 
is still a question for historians if, in many instances, the king 
and the royalists did not betray her, Ireland alone, after having 
taken her stand for a whole decade of years for God and the 
king, resolved to face destruction unflinchingly in support of 
what she imagined to be a noble cause. 

After tbe landing of Cromwell, when to any sensible man 
there no longer remained hope of serving the cause of the king, 
when the desire which is natural to every human heart, of saving 
what can be saved, might, not only without dishonor, but with 
justice and right, have dictated the necessity of coming to terms 
with tbe parliamentarians, and of abandoning a cause which was 
hopeless, " on the 4th of December, 1649, Eber McMahon, 
Bishop of Clogher, a mere Irishman by name, by descent, by 
enthusiastic attachment to bis country, exerted bis great abili- 
ties to rouse his countrymen to a persevering resistance to 
Cromwell, and to unite all hearts and bands in tbe support of 
Ormond's administration. . . . All the bishops concurred in 
bis views, and subscribed a solemn declaration that they would, 
to the utmost of tbeir power, forward bis Majesty's i-igbts, and 
the good of the nation. . . . Ormond, at last, either sensible 
that no reliance could be placed on them, or that tbe treachery 
of Inchiquin's troops was, at least, on the part of the Irisb, a 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 273 

fair ground of distrust and suspicion of tlie remainder, consented 
to tlieir removal." — (" Irish Catholics^) 

" At last ! " will be tlie reader's exclamation, while lie won- 
ders if another people could be found forbearing enough to wait 
eight years for the adoption of such a necessary measure. 

And the only reward for their fidelity to King Charles I. 
could under the circumstances be destruction. They waited with 
resignation for the impending gloom to overshadow them. Ter- 
rible moment for a nation, when despair itself fails to nerve it 
for further resistance and possible success! Such was the posi- 
tion of the Irish at the death of Charles. 

Who shall describe that loyalty? After Ormond had met 
with the defeat he deserved in tlie field ; after the cities had fallen 
one after another into the hands of the destroyer, who seldom 
thought himself bound to observe the conditions of surrender ; 
after the chiefs, who might have protracted the struggle, had dis- 
appeared either by death or exile, the doom of the nation was 
sealed; yet it shrank not from the consequences. 

The barbarities of Cromwell and his soldiers had depopulated 
large tracts of territory to such an extent that the troops march- 
ing through them were compelled to carry provisions as through 
a desert. The cattle, the only resource of an agricultural country, 
had been all consumed in a ten years' war. It was reported that, 
after every successful engagement, the republican general ordered 
all the men from the age of sixteen to sixty to be slaughtered 
without mercy, all the boys from six to sixteen to be deprived 
of sight, and the women to have a red-hot iron thrust through 
their breasts. Kumors such as these, exaggerated though they 
may be, testify at least to the terror which Cromwell inspired. 
As for the captured cities, there can be no doubt of the wholesale 
massacres carried out therein by his orders. Of the entire popu- 
lation of Tredagh only thirty persons survived, and they were 
condemned to the labor of slaves. Hugh Peters, the chaplain 
of Fairfax, Avrote after this barbarous execution : " We are 
masters of Tredagh ; no enemy was spared ; I just come from 
the church where I had gone to thank the Lord." 

The same fate awaited Wexford, and, later on, Drogheda. 
Cromwell, when narrating those bloody massacres, concluded by 
saying, " People blame me, but it was the will of God." 

The Bible, the holy word of God, misread and misunderstood 
by those fanatics, persuaded them that it would be a crime not to 
exterminate the Irish, as the Lord punished Saul for having 
spared Agag and the chief of the Amalekites. Whoever wishes 
for further details of these sickening atrocities, committed in the 
name of God, may find them in a multitude of histories of the 
time, but chiefly in the " Threnodia" of Friar Morrison. 

Certain modern Irish historians would seem not to under- 
18 



274 THE lEISH AN'D THE STUARTS. 

stand tlie heroism of their own countrymen. " Bitterly," says 
A. M. O'SuUivan, " did the Irish people pay for their loyalty to 
an English sovereign. Unhappily for their worldly fortunes, if 
not for their fame, they were high-spirited and unfearing, where 
pusillanimity would certainly have been safety, and might have 
been only prudence." 

But the verdict of posterity, always a just one, calls such a 
high-spirited and unfearing attitude true heroism, and spurns 
pusillanimity even when it insures safety and may be called pru- 
dence, if its result is the surrender of holy faith and Christian 
truth. Safety and prudence characterized the conduct of the 
English nation under the iron rule of Cromwell, as under the 
tyranny of the Tudors. Can the reader of history admire the 
nation on that account ? "Who shall affirm that the result of the 
craven spirit of the English was the prosperity which ensued, and 
that of Irish heroism destruction and gloom ? The history of 
either nation is far from ended yet ; and bold would be the man 
who dare assert that the prosperity of England is everlasting, 
and the humiliation of Ireland never to know an end. 

However that may be, this at least is undeniable : the opinion 
current of the Irish character is demonstrated to be altogether 
an erroneous one by the incontrovertible facts cursorily narrated 
above. Determination of purpose, adherence to conscience and 
principle, consistency of conduct, are terms all too weak to convey 
an idea of the magnanimity displayed by the people, and of their 
heroic bearing throughout those stirring events. 

At last, after a bloody struggle with Cromwell and Ireton, on 
May 12, 1652, "the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered at 
Kilkenny on terms which were successively adopted by the other 
principal bodies of troops, between that time and the September 
following, when the Ulster forces came last to composition." 
Then began the real woes of Ireland. Never was the ingenuity 
of man so taxed to destroy a whole nation as in the measures 
adopted by the Protector for that purpose. It is necessary to pre- 
sent a brief sketch of them, since all that the Irish suffered was 
designed to punish them for their attachment to their religion, 
and, be it borne in mind, .their devotion to the lawful dynasty of 
the Stuarts. 

First, then, to render easy of execution the stern and cruel 
resolve of the new government, the defenders of the nation were 
not only to be disarmed, but j;>2<^ out of the way. Hence Crom- 
well was gracious enough to consent that they be permitted to 
leave the country and take service in the armies of the foreign 
powers then at peace with the Commonwealth. Forty thousand 
men, officers and soldiers, adopted this desperate resolution. 

" Soon agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, 
and the Prince de Conde, were contending for the service of the 



THE lEISH AND THE STUAETS. 275 

Irisli troops. Don Eicardo Wliite, in May, 1652, shipped seven 
thousand in "batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Galway, Limerick, 
and Bantry, for the King of Spain. Colonel Christopher Mayo 
got liberty in September to beat his drums, to raise three thou- 
sand more for the same destination. Lord Muskerry took with 
him five thousand to the King of Poland. In July, 1654, three 
thousand five hundred went to serve the Prince de Conde. Sir 
"Walter Dungan and others got liberty to beat their drums in 
different garrisons for various destinations." — [Prendergast.) 

To prove that the desperate resolution of leaving their coun- 
try did not originate with the Irish, notwithstanding what some 
have written to the contrary, it is enough to remark that their 
exj)atriation was made a necessary condition of their surrender 
by the new government. For instance. Lord Clanrickard, 
according to Matthew O'Connor, " deserted and surrounded, 
could obtain no terms for the nation, nor indeed for himself and 
his troops, except with the sad liberty of transportation to any 
other country in amity with the Commonwealth." 

To prove, if necessary, still further that the expatriation of 
the Irish troops was part of a scheme already resolved upon, it 
is enough to remember the indisputable fact that from the sur- 
render at Kilkenny in 1652, until the open announcement in 
the September of 1653, that the Parliament had assigned Con- 
naught for the dwelling-place of the Irish nation, whither they 
were to be "transplanted" before the 1st of May, 1654, the va- 
rious garrisons and small armies which had fought so gallantly 
for Ireland and the Stuarts were successively urged (and urged 
by Cromwell meant compelled) to leave the country ; and it was 
only when the last of the Irish regiments had departed that the 
doom of the nation was boldly and clearly announced. 

But these forced exiles were not restricted to the warrior 
class. "The Lord Protector," says Prendergast, "applied to 
the Lord Henry Cromwell, then major-general of the forces of 
Ireland, to engage soldiers .... and to secure a thousand 
young Irish girls to be shipped to Jamaica. Henry Cromwell 
answered that there would be no difficulty, only that force must 
be used in taking them ; and he suggested the addition of fifteen 
hundred or two thousand boys of trom twelve to fourteen years 
of age. . . . The numbers finally fixed were one thousand boys 
and one thousand girls." 

The total number of children disposed of in the same way, 
from 1652 to 1655, has been variously estimated at from twenty 
thousand to one hundred thousand. The British Government at 
last was compelled to interfere and put a stop to the infamous 
traffic, when, the mere Irish proving too scarce, the agents were 
not sufficiently discriminating in their choice, but shipped off 
English children also to the Tobacco Islands. 



276 THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS, 

At last the island was left utterly without defenders, and suf- 
ficiently depopulated. It is calculated that, when the last great 
measure was announced and put into execution, only half a mill- 
ion of Irish people remained in the country, the rest of the 
resident population being composed of the Scotch and English, 
introduced by James I., and the soldiers and adventurers let in 
by Cromwell. 

The main features of the celebrated " act of settlement " are 
known to all. It was an act intended to dispose quietly of half 
a million of human beings, destined certainly in the minds of its 
projectors to disappear in due time, without any great violence — 
to die oif — and leave the whole island in the possession of the 
" godly." 

Connaught is famed as being the wildest and most barren 
province of Ireland. At the best, it can support but a scanty 
population. At this time it had been completely devastated by 
a ten years' war and by the excesses of the parliamentary forces. 
This province then was mercifully granted to the unhappy Irish 
race ; it was set apart as a paradise for the wretched remnant to 
dwell in — all Connaught, except a strip four miles wide along the 
sea, and a like strip along the right bank of the Shannon. This 
latter judicious provision was undoubtedly intended to prevent 
them from dwelling by the ocean, whence they might derive sub- 
sistence or assistance, or means of escape in the event of their ever 
rising again ; and, on the other hand, from crossing the Shan- 
non, on the east side of which their homes might still be seen. 
This cordon of four miles' width was drawn all around what 
was the Irish nation, and filled with the fiercest zealots of the 
" army of the Lord " to keep guard over the devoted victims. 

Surely the doom of the race was at last sealed ! 

But let all justice be done to the Protector. The act was to 
the efiect that, on the first day of May, 1654, all who, through- 
out the war, had not displayed a constant good afi'ection to the 
Parliament of England in opposition to Charles I., were to be 
removed with their families and servants to the wilds of a poor 
and desolated province, where certain lands were to be given 
them in return for their own estates. But, who of the Irish 
could prove that they had displayed a " constant good affection " 
to the English Parliament during a ten years' war ? The act 
was nothing less than a proscription of the whole nation. The 
English of the Pale were included among the old natives, and 
even a few Protestant royalists, who had taken up the cause of 
the fallen Stuarts. The only exception made was in favor of 
" husbandmen, ploughmen, laborers, artificers, and others of the 
inferior sort." The English and Scotch — constituted by this act 
of settlement lords and masters of the three richest provinces 
of Ireland — could not condescend to till the soil with their own 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 277 

hands and attend to tlie mechanical arts required in civil society. 
Those duties were reserved for the Irish poor. It was hoped 
that, deprived of tlieir nobility and clergy, they might be turned 
to any account by their new masters, and either become good 
Protestants or perish as slaves. Herein mentita est iniquitas 
sihi. 

The heart-rending details of this outrage on humanity may be 
seen in Mr. Prendergast's " Cromwellian Settlement." There 
all who read may form some idea of the extent of Ireland's mis- 
fortunes. 

It is a wonder which cannot fail to strike the reader, how, 
after so many precautions had been taken, not only against the 
further increase of the race, but for its speedy demolition, how, 
reduced to a bare half million, penned off on a barren tract of 
land, left utterly at the mercy of its persecutors, without priests, 
without organization of any kind, it not only failed to perish, but, 
from that time, has gone on, steadily increasing, until to-day it 
spreads out wide and far, not only on the island of its birth, but 
on the broad face of two vast continents. 

In the space at our disposal, it is impossible to satisfy the 
curiosity of the reader on this very curious and interesting topic. 
A few remarks, however, may serve to broadly indicate the chief 
causes of this astonishing fact, taken apart from the miraculous 
intervention of God in their favor. 

First, then, Connaught became more Irish than ever, and a 
powerful instrument, later on, to assist in the resurrection of the 
nation. In fact, as will soon be seen, it preserved life to it. 
Again, the outcasts, who were allowed to remain in the other 
three provinces as servants, or slaves, rather, were not found 
manageable on the score of religion ; and, although new acts of 
Parliament forbade any bishop or priest to remain in the island, 
many did remain, some of them coming back from the Continent, 
whither they had been exported, to aid their unfortunate coun- 
trymen in this their direst calamity. 

As Matthew O'Connor rightly says : "The ardent zeal, the 
fortitude and calm resignation of the Catholic clergy during this 
direful persecution, might stand a comparison with the constancy 
of Christians during the first ages of the Church. In the season of 
prosperity they may have pushed their pretensions too far " — ^this 
is M. O'Connor's private opinion of the Confederation of Kil- 
kenny — " but, in the hour of trial, they rose superior to human 
infirmities. . . . Sooner than abandon their flocks altogether, 
they fled from the communion of men, concealed themselves in 
woods and caverns, from whence they issued, whenever the pur- 
suit of their enemies abated, to preach to the people, to comfort 
them in their afflictions, to encourage them in their trials ; . . . 
their haunts were objects of indefatigable search ; bloodhounds, 



278 THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 

the last device of human cruelty, were employed for the purpose, 
and the same price was set on the head of a priest as on that of 
a wolf." — {Irish Catholics^ 

But, the expectation that the Irish of the lower classes, bereft 
of their pastors as well as of the guidance of their chieftains, 
would fall a prey to proselytizing ministers, and lose at once their 
nationality and their religion, was doomed to meet with disap- 
pointment. 

Perhaps the cause more effective than all others in pre- 
serving the Irish nation from disappearing totally, came from 
a quarter least expected, or rather the most improbable and 
wonderful. 

!N"o device seemed better calculated to succeed in Protestant- 
izing Ireland than the decree of Parliament which set forth that 
not only the officers, but even the common soldiers of the par- 
liamentary army should be paid for their services, not in money, 
but in land ; and that the estates of the old owners should be 
parcelled out and distributed among them in payment, as well 
as among those who, in England, had furnished funds for the 
prosecution of the war. Although many soldiers objected to 
this mode of compensation, some selling for a trifle the land 
allotted to them and returning to their own country, the great 
majority was compelled to rest satisfied with the government 
offer, and so resolved to settle down in Ireland and turn farmers. 
But a serious difficulty met them : women could not be induced 
to abandon their own country and go to dwell in the sister isle, 
while the Irish girls, being all Catholics, a decree of Parliament 
forbade the soldiers to marry them, unless they first succeeded 
in converting them to Protestantism. After many vain attempts, 
doubtless, the Cromwellian soldiers soon found the impossibility 
of bringing the " refractory " daughters of Erin to their way oi 
thinking, and could find only one mode of bridging over the 
difficulty — to marry them first, without requiring them to ajDOS- 
tatize, and secure their prize after by swearing that their wives 
were the most excellent of Protestants. Thus while perjury 
became an every-day occurrence, the victorious army began to be 
itself vanquished by a powerful enemy which it had scarcely 
calculated upon, and was utterly unprepared to meet, and finally 
resting from its labors, enjoyed the sweets of peace and the fat 
of the land. 

But woman, once she feels her power, is exacting, and in 
course of time the Cromwellian soldiers found that further 
sacrifices still were required of them, which they had never 
counted iipon. Their wives could, by no persuasion, be induced 
to speak English, so that, however it might go against the grain, 
the husbands were compelled to learn Irish and speak it habit- 
ually as best they might. Their difficulties began to multiply 



THE IRISH AND THE STUAETS. 2Y9 

with tlieir children, when they found them learning Irish in the 
cradle, irresistible in their Irish wit and humor, and lisping the 
prayers and reverencing the faith they had learned at their 
mothers' knees. So that, from that time to this, the posterity of 
Cromwell's " Ironsides," of snch of them at least as remained in 
Ireland, have been devoted Catholics and ardent Irishmen. 

The case was otherwise with the chief oflBcers of the parlia- 
mentary army, who had received large estates and could easily 
obtain wives from England. They remained stanch Protestants, 
and their children have continued in the religion received with 
the estates which came to them from this wholesale confiscation. 
But the bulk of the army, instead of helping to form a Protestant 
middle class and a Protestant yeomanry, has really helped to 
perpetuate the sway of the Catholic religion in Ireland, and the 
feeling of nationality so marked to-day. This very remarkable 
fact has been well established and very plainly set forth, a few 
years ago, by eminent English reviewers. 

Meanwhile, Ireland was a prey to all the evils which can 
afflict a nation. Pestilence was added to the ravages of war 
and the woes of transplantation, and it raged alike among the con- 
querors and the conquered. Friar Morrisson's ^^Threnodia " 
reads to-day like an exaggerated lament, the burden of which was 
drawn from a vivid imagination. Yet can there be little doubt 
that it scarcely presented the whole truth ^ an exact reproduc- 
tion of all the heart-rending scenes then daily enacted in the 
unfortunate island would prove a tale as moving as ever har- 
rowed the pitying heart of a reader. 

'And all this suffering was the direct consequence of two 
things — the attachment of the Irish to the Catholic religion, 
and their devotion to the Stuart dynasty. Modern historians, 
in considering all the circumstances, express themselves unable 
to understand the constancy of this people's affection for a line 
of kings from whom they had invariably experienced, not only 
neglect, but positive opposition, i^ not treachery. In their opin- 
ion, only the strangest obliquity of judgment can explain such 
infatuation. Some call it stupidity ; but the Irish people have 
never been taxed with that. Even in the humblest ranks of life 
among them, there exists, not only humor, but a keenness of 
perception, and at times an extraordinary good sense, which is 
quick to detect motives, and find out what is uppermost in 
the minds of others. 

There is but one reading of the riddle, consistent with the 
whole character of the people : they clung to the Stuarts because 
they were obedient to the precepts and duties of religion, and, 
labored under the belief, however mistaken, that from the Stu- 
arts alone could they hope for an^ thing like freedom. Their 
spiritual rulers had insisted on the duty of sustaining at all 



280 THE lElSH AND THE STUARTS. 

hazard the legitimate authority of the king, and they were firmly 
convinced that they could expect from no other a relaxation of 
the religious penal statutes imposed on them by their enemies. 
The more frequent grew their disappointments in the measures 
adopted by the sovereigns on whom they had set their hopes, 
the more firmly were they convinced that their intentions were 
good, but rendered futile by the men who surrounded and 
coerced them. 

Keligion can alone explain this singular afi*ection of the Irish 
people for a race which, in reality, has caused the greatest of 
their misfortunes. 

The subsequent events of this strange history are in perfect 
keeping with those preceding. .A few words will suffice to 
sketch them. 

On the death of Oliver Cromwell, his son Kichard, being 
unable and indeed unwilling to remain . at the head of the 
English state, the nation, tired of the iron rule of the Protector, 
fearful certainly of anarchy, and preferring the conservative 
measures of monarchy to the ever-changing revolutions of a 
commonwealth, recalled the son of Charles I. to the throne. 

But a kind , of bargain had been struck by him with those 
who disposed of the crown ; and he undertook and promised to 
disturb as little as possible the vested interests created by the 
revolution, that is to. say, he pledged himself to let the settle- 
ment of property remain as he found it. In England that 
promise was productive of little mischief to the nation at large, 
though fatal to the not very numerous families who had been 
deprived of their estates by the Parliament. But, in Ireland, it 
was a very different matter ; for there the interests of the whole 
nation were ousted to make room for these " vested interests " 
of proprietors of scarcely ten years' standing. 

The Irish nobility and gentry, at first unaware of the exist- 
ence of this bargain, were in joyful expectation that right would 
at last be done them, as it was for loyalty to the father of the 
new king that they had been robbed of all their possessions. 
They were soon undeceived. To their surprise, they learned 
that the speculators, army-officers, and soldiers already in pos- 
session of their estates, were not to be disturbed, short aS the 
possession had been ; and that only such lands as were yet 
unappropriated should be returned to their rightful owners, 
provided only they were not papists, or could prove that they 
had been " innocent papists." 

The consequences of this bargain are clear. The Irish of 
the old native race who had been, as now appeared, so foolishly 
ardent in their loyalty to the throne, were to be abandoned to 
the fate to which Cromwell had consigned them, and could expect 
to recover nothing of what they had so nobly lost. So fiagrant- 



THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 281 

ly unjust was tlie wtole proceeding, that after a time many 
Englishmen even saw the injustice of the decision, and lifted up 
their voices in defence of the Irish Catholics who alone could 
hope for nothing from the restoration of royalty. To put a stop 
to this, the infamous " Gates " fabrication was brought forward, 
which destroyed a number of English Catholic families and 
stifled the voice of humanity in its efforts to befriend the Irish 
race ; and so sudden, universal, and lasting, was the effect of this 
plot in closing the eyes of all to the claims of the Irish, that 
when its chief promoter, Shaftesbury, was dragged to the Tower 
and there imprisoned as a miscreant, and Gates himself suffered 
a punishment too mild for his villany, nevertheless no one 
thought of again taking up the cause of the Irish natives. 

It is almost impossible in these days to realize what has oc- 
cupied our attention in this chapter. The unparalleled act of 
spoliation by which four-fifths of the Irish nation were deprived 
of their property by Cromwell because of their devotion to 
Charles I., for the alleged reason that they could not prove a con- 
stant good affection for the English regicide Parliament, that 
spoliation was ratified by the son of Charles within a few years 
after the rightful owners, who had sacrificed their property for 
the sake of his father, had been dispossessed, while the parliamen- 
tarians, who by force of arms had broken down the power of 
Charles and enabled the members of the Long Parliament to try 
their king and bring him to the block, those very soldiers and 
officers were left in possession of their ill-gotten plunder, at a 
time when many of the owners were only a few miles away in 
Connaught, or even inhabiting the out-houses of their own man- 
sions, and tilling the soil as menial servants of Cromwell's 
troopers. 

The case, apparently similar, which occurred in after-years, of 
the French emigrant nobility, cannot be compared with the 
result of this strange concession of Charles II. In fact, it may 
be said that the spoliations of lY92-'93 in France would 
probably never have taken place but for the successful examj^le 
held up to the eyes of the legislators of the French Eepublic by 
the English Eevolution. 

As for the share which Charles II. himself bore in the meas- 
ure, it is best told by the fact that the work of spoliation was car- 
ried on so vigorously during the reign of the " merry monarch," 
that when a few years later "William of Grange came to the 
throne there was no land left for him to dispose of among his 
followers save the last million of acres. All the rest had been 
portioned off. Well might Dr. Madden say : " The whole of Ire- 
land has been so thoroughly confiscated that the only exception 
was that of five or six families of English blood, some of whom 
had been attainted in the reign of Henry YIII., but recovered 



282 THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 

tlieir possessions before Tyrone's rebellion, and had the good for- 
tune to escape the pillage of the English republic inflicted by 
Cromwell ; and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been 
confiscated twice, or perhaps thrice, in the course of a century. 
The situation, therefore, of the Irish nation at the revolution, 
stands unparalleled in the history of the inhabited world." 

A few words will suffice to show what the Irish owe to the 
Stuarts. Jardes I. established a colony on Irish soil, which had 
nothing in common with the native inhabitants, and which, ow- 
ing to the altered state of affairs in the island, could never hope 
to coalesce with them. All races of men, which had landed on 
the island and endeavored to conquer it, had gradually yielded 
to the sociability of the Irish nature and ended by adopting the 
native manners, disposition, and language. The Protestant col- 
ony of Ulster has never showed the least inclination to follow 
these repeated examples, -except partially and for a short time at 
the end of the last century, on the occasion of the insurrection 
of 1798. But soon after, with a few honorable exceptions, the 
same colony became more bitter than ever against every thing 
Irish, boasted of being only Irish-Scotch, and, under the name of 
Orangemen, adopted the most revolting principles against the 
other inhabitants of the common soil. 

At all times, except during the brief interval of the civil war 
of '98, the Ulster colony has looked to England for its support 
against its "enemies," the Catholics ; and, in order to gain that 
support, it has surrendered every prerogative dear to the lovers 
of freedom ; as far as possible it subjected the Irish Parliament, 
as long as such existed, to that of England ; by packing juries, 
it has contributed to "render that so much-vaunted free institu- 
tion, the British jury, a mockery; it has helped materially to 
cripple native trade and industry, and ruined the country com- 
mercially to please England ; in all which it may be said to have 
proved itself more English than the English. 

Such are a few of the blessings imported into the unfortunate 
country with the colony of James I. ; so that what the Plantage- 
nets and Lan casters could never effect, what the Tudors did not 
even attempt, that did the Stuarts ; they divided the island into 
two permanent camps opposed among themselves, always at war 
more or less, and altogether irreconcilable even after many gen- 
erations have been born, passed away, and died, in contact one 
with the other. 

The effect of that long and seemingly eternal division is cer- 
tainly far more deplorable than were ever the insane feuds of the 
clans, with all their petty warfare and bloody conflicts. 

But to come to the grand spoliation, which throws all previous 
ones into the shade, and is enough in itself to set the English na- 
tion under Cromwell on a par with the most devastating hordes 



THE IRISH AKD THE STUARTS. 283 

that ever set sail on a voyage of piracy under the sea-kongs of 
old. The measure had the merit at least of being radical and 
thorough. By a single act of Parliament three whole provinces, 
the richest in the island, were confiscated at once and without 
more ado ; and, if the poorest and most desolate province was 
still left to the Irish, it was evidently in the minds of the humane 
legislators intended as a temporary expedient to get rid of a 
wretched half-million of people. It threw a show of humanity 
over the measure. They might have driven them at once into 
the sea ; but it looked better to pen them off like so many cattle 
on a blea,k land, to encircle them with a cordon of bitter foes, 
and, in the devout hope that so it would speedily come to pass, 
there let them starve and die out at their ease. 

Strange to say, this spoliation must be laid altogether at the 
door of the Stuarts. Every writer on Irish history has been 
careful to note how many hundreds of thousands or millions of 
acres were successively confiscated by Henry YIII., Edward YI., 
Mary, Elizabeth, James I., and afterward William of Orange. 
But no one has ever been able to ascertain how much Cromwell 
appropriated except by coming to the decisions of the Court of 
Claims under Charles II. So that this monarch has literally kept 
the books for the robbing firm, Cromwell and Parliament, and 
given the only legal title accompanied with vouchers, which the 
Cromwellian adventurers and " undertakers " ever received. 

It is said, in a general way, that the Protector took three en- 
tire provinces, and this statement is certainly true in the main. 
But, until the establishment of the Court of Claims at the Resto- 
ration, there was really nothing sure and finally settled,_ so thc^t 
many of the decisions of the Loughrea commissioners and Ath- 
lone judges of claims, under the Commonwealth, might have 
been reversed, and were expected to be reversed by the new 
Court of Claims established by Charles II., although that mon- 
arch had pledged himself to disturb as little as possible the 
" vested interests " created by the revolution. 

The Protector's reign lasted only nine years, and the legal 
and judicial operations required by the Cromwellian act of settle- 
ment began several years subsequently to his taking in his hands 
the reins of government, thus supposing many years of investi- 
gation, discussion, and hearing of cases, with the possibility of 
appeal and reversal of judgment, before a final decision could be 
arrived at. So that the Restoration came about while a multi- 
tude of those questions were still pending, and it was only nat- 
ural to expect that, with the new order, many of them might 
have been stopped, many decisions reversed, since they had been 
invariably given in favor of a revolution now reprobated. 

Had Charles II. only felt the slightest inclination to serve his 
real friends and the defenders of his father, the Irish, how many 



284 THE lEISH AND THE STUARTS. 

of tliose Cromwellian measures would have remained ? Let a 
skilful and cautious lawyer, gifted witli ready pen and glib 
tongue, and accustomed to sucli intricate questions, respond. 
Even granting that the king had been compelled to promise not 
to disturb the " vested interests," such promise could only be 
held to refer to vested interests which stood well-grounded, fixed, 
decided, clear, and without any doubt or counter-claim of what- 
ever description. With a little trouble, and a judicious use of 
the royal prerogative, it is very safe to assert that the Cromwell- 
ian act of settlement would have been reduced to slender pro- 
portions, and assumed a very different aspect from that which it 
now assumes in history. 

For, to come to the point, in the enumeration of the various 
confiscations in Ireland, given by Dr. Madden, in his " Connec- 
tion," etc., that of Cromwell is laid entirely at the door of Charles 
II., under the following heading : " Set out by the Court of 
Claims at the Restoration, seven million eight hundred thousand 
acres." Thus, nearly eight million acres of Irish soil have actu- 
ally — that is to say, legally and without hope of reversal of sen- 
tence — ^passed from the hands of the rightful owners into those of 
foreign adventurers and robbers under the reign of the second 
Charles Stuart. And, as the whole island contains only about 
eleven million five hundred thousand acres, it is clear that the 
three entire provinces Avere included in that act of spoliation. 

In his speech on the " Union," which he so strongly advo- 
cated in 1800, Lord Clare puts the case in the strongest and 
clearest light : " I wish gentlemen, who call themselves the digni- 
fied and independent Irish nation, to know that seven million 
eight hundred thousand acres of land were set out, under the au- 
thority of this act — passed under Charles II. — to a motley crew 
of English adventurers, civil and military, nearly to the total ex- 
clusion of the old inhabitants of the island, many of whom, who 
were innocent of the rebellion, lost their inheritance, as well for 
the difiiculties imposed upon them by the Court of Claims, in 
the proofs required of their innocency, as for a deficiency in the 
fund to English adventurers, arising principally from a profuse 
grant made by the crown to the Duke of York," afterward 
James II. 

Charles II., therefore, took upon himself to be, in his own 
person, the executor of the Cromwellian settlement, and we have 
seen how far his duties extended. In the last revolution, of 1688, 
William of Orange had only left a poor fragment of a million of 
acres wherewith to complete the extensive operations of James 
I. and Charles II. 

And still, even at the death of this last-mentioned monarch, 
the Irish displayed toward his brother, James II., an afiection to 
the extent of resolving to perish with the dynasty to which he 



THE lEISH AlTD THE STUAETS. 285 

belonged. Tliis time, however, tlieir attacliment cannot be said 
to bave been altogetber misplaced, as far as the sentiments and 
designs of the new king in their regard went. James had the 
honest desire of granting to them, as to all his subjects, real 
liberty of conscience. He was the first of the English monarchs 
to proclaim what in modern times is called " religious freedom," 
and he lost his crown merely because the majority of his subjects 
were determined to preserve intact to themselves the preponder- 
ance they had gained over the Catholics, and the right they had 
already made such good use of for so long a time, of oppressing 
them at will. 

Few pages of Irish history are so full of interest as the three 
years' war which ended with the surrender of Limerick. Ath- 
lone, Aughrim, Limerick, even the Boyne, are glorious fields for 
the Irish race, though they culminated in defeat. Often was it 
the sheer courage of despair which filled the heart and nerved 
the arm of those heroic Irish warriors. To describe the vicissi- 
tudes of that short but gigantic struggle would be to overstep 
our limits. A general remark, however, which seems to have 
escaped the observation of many writers, is pertinent to the sub- 
ject in hand. At the Boyne, where the campaign began, the 
Irish army found itself in the midst of the country which had 
been stripped of its native inhabitants by Cromwell and, it may 
be said, by Charles II. Therefore was the contest short, because, 
after the first reverse, no resistance could come from the sur- 
rounding districts. This was doubtless the reason w^hy many 
oflScers advised James, at the opening of the campaign, to fall 
back on the line of the Shannon. 

It was when James gave up the contest and fled to France, 
that the war really began with the siege of Athlone, before 
whose walls the victors of the Boyne suffered a repulse. After 
this, the entire war was confined to the frontiers of Connaught 
from north to south ; for there was the Irish nation enclosed and 
packed together. If Louis XIY., in place of sending ofiicers and 
a few troops, had dispatched arms and munitions of war in quan- 
tity sufficient, it is now evident that a hundred thousand men 
would have straightway started up from the wilds of desolate 
Connaught to save Ireland to James, and, in all probability, 
England also, at the time dissatisfied with the uncouth manners 
of the usurper and the greed of his Dutch followers. 

One thing only is certain : James may have failed to perse- 
vere a sufficient time at the head of his Irish subjects ; Louis 
may have failed to see and avail himself of the right moment of 
success ; but the Irish, all that was left of them, failed in none 
of the heroic qualities of the soldier, and in falling then forever, 
to all seeming, they fell as soldiers care to fall when struggle is 
useless, with honor saved and duty nobly done. 



286 THE' IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 

Even then tlieir resistance would liave been prolonged to the 
last had not honorable and fair c'onditions been tendered them 
at Limerick, only to be shamefully violated when the capitula- 
tion was effected. 

The conditions of that surrender were, that they should 
obtain for themselves and their countrymen the great boon of 
religious liberty, security for all who had served King James, by 
merely taking an oath of future allegiance to William and 
Mary, and the privilege to every nobleman and gentleman en- 
gaged in the war to possess and carry arms for the protection of 
their persons. 

Allured by these solemn engagements of the enemy, believing 
in the promise and plighted word of a king and a soldier, the Irish 
consented to surrender their last stronghold. The world knows 
how faithfully the solemn engagement, the royal promise, the 
soldier's word, was kept. Sarsfield sailed away with the newly- 
arrived French fleet, containing nearly twenty thousand men, and 
the Irish were left completely at the mercy of their masters. Then 
began the century of gloom which will be described in the next 
chapter. 

But, before closing the present, the reader will pardon a few 
reflections on the strange fascination which the Stuart name 
possessed for the Irish, the spell it held over them, a spell which 
lasted until the surrender of Limerick, where it was at last 
broken, never to weave its magic meshes again between them 
and the person or the cause of any British king or government. 
Irish faith in English honor of any shape or form fell with 
Limerick, never to be built up again. 

It is a mistake to pretend, with Dr. Madden, that Queen 
Anne, the last of the throned Stuarts, enjoyed the allegiance of her 
Irish subjects. The frightful penal laws enacted during her reign 
were scarcely calculated to evoke such a feeling, and, if they did 
not organize for open resistance to such tyranny just then, it 
was owing to the sheer impossibility and despair of the success 
of such a movement. Bereft of all means whereby a nation can 
manifest its will, there appeared to be no will left to them, 
beyond the abject submission and apathetic resignation of the 
Eastern slave. Numerous secret societies soon began to spring up 
among them, however, showing clearly enough that the native 
determination never to yield was as strong in them as ever ; but 
the illusion, which had so long borne them up, that in the Stuart 
line lay their last hope as a nation, was gone forever, and no 
longer inspired them with that heroic feeling which had ennobled 
their last struggle. 

We hope that the reader has seen with us that the secret of 
that heroism was their religion. All who have written on this 
eventful period seem to have failed to take into sufficient account 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 287 

this feeling, which is always uppermost in the Irish heart, 
and confess themselves nnable to explain this singular hallu- 
cination. 

But, as we have seen, too cursorily perhaps, it was the re- 
membrance of his Catholic mother, Mary of Scotland, which 
gave rise to their chief reason for hope on the accession of 
James I. ; it was the supposed good disposition of his son 
Charles, and, further still, the knowledge of the Catholic piety of 
that monarch's queen, Henrietta, which revived those hopes 
when James died. Then the Confederation of Kilkenny, headed 
by their bishops and a nuncio of the Holy See, induced them to 
continue firm in their allegiance to the king. TJnder Charles II. 
they suffered; they had no cause to fight for him, though, had 
there been, it is certain that they would have embraced it, as 
under his rule they really enjoyed a kind of religious liberty, in 
spite of existing laws. But for James II. their feeling rose into 
enthusiasm. In him they beheld a sincere Catholic, suffering for 
his religion as they themselves suffered ; and this fact alone 
explains their wonderful attachment to his cause, and the, in vin- 
cible determination to fall with him or rise again with the rising 
of his power. 

It is doubtful if, in the whole course of their history, they 
ever displayed a greater attachment to their religion than they 
did under the Stuarts. The fearful trials they were subjected 
to by Cromwell were as a fierce furnace-blast threatening to 
consume them utterly, but without eliciting from them a sign 
of regret for having taken their stand boldly for God and the 
king, in the face of the extremities which they braved in conse- 
quence. 

But it may be said that at this very time of the apparent de- 
struction of all their hopes, God was preparing the way for the 
events which were to lead up to their future resurrection. The 
fact previously touched upon of the uprising of the true Irish 
nation, after the destruction of clanship, came more and more 
into prominence, and grew silently under the subsequent period 
of gloom. Day by day they became more united, more firm in 
their resolve never to coalesce with their persecutors, and never 
to relinquish their great distinctive badge — the faith. It parted 
them off from their oppressors by an impassable line ; and, as 
their utter destruction was impossible, their existence as. a nation, 
apart from those who deprived them of all that was theirs, grew 
more marked than ever, and was brought into stronger relief. 

In their very attachment to the Stuarts lies a proof of this 
last remark. For there is in their support of that dynasty a fact 
which deserves to be set forth : the Mnaniniity of the feeling 
which sprung up simultaneously in their hearts, which was only 
intensified by difficulties and misfortunes, which survived even 



288 THE lEISH AND THE STUAETS. 

tlie Cromwellian calamity, and wTiicli was extinguislied in all, as 
suddenly, simultaneously, and unaecountably, as it rose. 

J^ever before, as never after, did the Irisli show a sign of 
true allegiance to the British crown ; hut, treated as aliens and 
enemies, they felt themselves at liberty to acknowledge or not 
the English monarchs as they chose. On a sudden, a silent, 
spontaneous feeling rises through the whole nation in favor of a 
new line of British sovereigns. This feeling was as utterly un- 
expected as it was universal. It was emphatically what is now 
called public opinion. Yet no meetings of citizens had been 
convoked, no books or pamphlets written, no periodical reviews 
or newspapers had advocated it ; none of those means now used 
for the manufacture of public opinion were known or called into 
play at the time. JSTevertheless, not only every one of the noble- 
men remaining in the country, every individual of the educated 
classes, as they are now called — and they were by no means few 
— every well-to-do farmer and grazier, but even the humblest 
cottagers, the poorest artisans and laborers, are at once so capti- 
vated by the new feeling, that disappointment following disap- 
pointment, ingratitude succeeded by greater ingratitude, calamity 
heaped upon calamity, all possible obstacles and discouraging 
circumstances cannot dissipate the fatal illusion, and turn into 
other and worthier channels the heroic efforts of the people. 
Surely this is public opinion, if such a thing as public opinion 
exists. 

But public opinion cannot exist without a nation from which 
to spring, and, in proportion as it is strong or weak, so is the 
nation com]3act and efficient or feeble. It is therefore an error 
to suppose that the Irish nation ended with the destruction of 
clanship. Not only did it subsist, but it really sprang from that 
destruction into new life and new activity, under Henry YIII. : 
an activity and a life peculiar to the Irish people. There was 
nothing to compare with it in any other race. Nor was the fact 
exemplified only in the single instance now under consideration. 
It may be said that it has ever since formed a characteristic of 
them, and is still frequently manifested in the same strange 
and unaccountable manner. Among other people, when a fact 
that calls forth general attention is reported, the opinions with 
regard to it differ with the individuals who discuss it, and the 
expressions of their opinions are as various almost as their faces ; 
but among Irishmen, as a rule, the same fact, if of great impor- 
tance, will be judged on alike by all ; all are unanimous to 
denounce or admire it ; there is no difference of opinion among 
them ; and yet, even to-day, they have, comparatively speaking, 
few newspapers and reviews whereby to form their opinions on 
men and things. They do not seem to require the common 
helps of ordinary people to think, reflect, judge, and pronounce ; 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 289 

a sort of electric current rims througli tlie whole mass, and the 
first expression on the lips of any one of them on a subject of 
importance meets with an immediate response in the minds 
of all the rest, because all have been impressed by it in like 
manner. 

Individual exceptions, of course, are to be found ; cavillers 
might quote facts to prove that this view is unfounded ; never- 
theless any one acquainted with this remarkable people will 
know that such is the case in general, and that few things are 
more remarkable among them, notwithstanding the universal rep- 
utation they enjoy for constant quarrelling and internal feuds. 

The difficulty which may be raised by such cavillers can be 
satisfactorily explained. On matters of faith, of religion, the 
Irish are unanimous ; and this fact is rendered the more striking 
by the acknowledgment that in matters of minor importance in 
life, their feelings are as various and changeable as a most impul- 
sive nature can make them. 

With regard to the first point, no two opinions are to found 
among them. "What the humblest and rudest wiU express hu- 
morously, rudely if you will, the more refined will only echo in 
language better attuned to the educated ear. 

This unanimity of feeling in the Irish people, as displayed in 
their attachment to the Stuart dynasty, wrought them up on one 
occasion at least to a pitch of real heroism, because religion, as 
was shown, lay at the bottom of it. The whole history of the 
nation bears out this solemn fact : that religion constitutes with 
them the strongest as the holiest feeling of all. What others 
fondly believe, they Jcnow to be a fact, that their religion is inde- 
structible and must triumph in the long-run, and that the 
triumph of their nation is one with the triumph of their religion. 
Can a nobler motive than this fire the human heart ? Where the 
wonder, then, that souls, ever swayed by such ennobling emo- 
tions, can be lifted up to do deeds gigantic and heroic ? 

One other circumstance still renders their unanimity on that 
occasion more remarkable and admirable. Their devotion was 
to the Stuarts, not to the English people ; to the dynasty, not to 
the nation over which it was set. Nevertheless, in bending to 
the yoke of the Stuarts, they bent to England also. They were 
perfectly conscious that it was to the kings of England that they 
tendered their true allegiance. They knew that, in accepting the 
dynasty, they accepted with it such English officials as Borlase, 
Parsons, and Ormond ; that with the official government they 
would have to accept colonists who detested them, and that 
those colonists would be preferred before them ; that in the 
lower ranks they would have to bow to English judges, sheriffs, 
informers even and spies. Something has been said of the 
police which the genius of Elizabeth invented, and which has 
19 



290 THE lEISH AND THE STUAETS. 

flourislied ever since. Yet did tliey not refuse the accessory 
witli the principal. Deluded men they may be called by many ; 
but people cannot ordinarily understand the high motives which 
move men swayed only by the twofold feeling of religion and 
nationality. 

]^othing in our opinion could better prove that the Irish 
were really a nation, at the time we speak of, than the remarks 
just set forth. When all minds are so unanimous, the wills so 
ready, the arms so strong and well prepared to strike together, 
it must be admitted that in the whole exists a common feeling, 
a national will. Self-government may be wanting ; it may have 
been suppressed by sheer force and kept under by the most un- 
favorable state of affairs, but the nation subsists and cannot fail 
ultimately to rise. 

In those eventful times shone forth too that characteristic 
which has already been remarked upon of a true conservative 
spirit and instinctive hatred for every principle which in our days 
is called radical and revolutionary. Had there existed in the 
Irish disposition the least inclination toward those social and 
moral aberrations, productive to-day of so many and such wide- 
spread evils, surely the period of the English Revolution was the 
fitting time to call them forth, and tu5;n them from their steady 
adherence to right and order into the new channels, toward 
which nations were being then hurried, and which would really 
have favored for the time-being their own efforts for indepen- 
dence. Then would the Irish have presented to future historians 
as stirring an episode of excitement and activity as was furnished 
by the English and Scotch at that time, by the French later on, 
and which to-day most European nations offer. 

The temptation was indeed great. They saw with what suc- 
cess rebellion was rewarded among the English and Scotch. They 
themselves were sure to be stamped as rebels whichever side they 
took ; and, as was seen, Charles II. allowed his commissioners in 
his act of settlement so to style them, and punish them for it — 
for supporting the cause of his father against the Parliament. 

"Would it not have been better for them to have become once, 
at least, rebels in true earnest, and reap the same advantage 
from rebellion which all around them reaped ? Yet did they 
stand proof against the demoralizing doctrines of Scotch Cove- 
nanter and English republican. Hume, who was openly adverse 
to every thing Irish, is compelled to describe this Catholic peo- 
ple as " loyal from principle, attached to regal power from reli- 
gious education, uniformly opposing popular frenzy, and zeal- 
ous vindicators of royal prerogatives." 

All this was in perfect accord with their traditional spirit and 
historical recollections. Revolutionary doctrines have ialways 
been antagonistic to the Irish mind and heart. This will appear 



THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS. 291 

more fully wlien recent times come under notice, and it may be 
a surprise to some to find that, with the exception of a few indi- 
viduals, who in nowise represent the nation, the latest and 
favorite theories of the world, not only on religion, science, and 
philosophy, but likewise on government and the social state, 
have never found open advocates among them. They, so far, 
constitute the only nation untouched, as yet, by the blight which 
is passing over and withering the life of modern society. Thus, 
it may be said that the exiled nobility still rules in Ireland by 
the recollection of the past, though there can no longer exist a 
hope of reconstructing an ancient order which has passed away 
forever. The prerogatives once granted to the aristocratic classes 
are now disowned and repudiated on all sides ; in Ireland they 
would be submitted to with joy to-morrow, could the actual de- 
scendants of the old families only make good their claims. It 
must not be forgotten that the Irish nobility, as a class, deserved 
well of their countrj^, sacrificed themselves for it when the time 
of sacrifice came, and therefore it is fitting that they should live 
in the memory of the people that sees their traces but finds them 
not. The dream of finding rulers for the nation from among 
those who claim to be the descendants of the old chieftains, is a 
dream and nothing mor^j; but, even still to many Irishmen, it 
is within the compass of reality, so deeply ingrained is their con- 
servative spirit, and so completely, in this instance, at least, are 
they free from the influx of modern ideas. 

The Stuarts, then, were supported by the Irish, not merely 
from religious, but also from national motives, inasmuch as that 
family was descended from the line of Gaelic kings, and, how- 
ever unworthy they themselves may have been, their rights were 
upheld and acknowledged against all comers. But, the Stuarts 
gone, allegiance was flung to the winds. • 

The success of Cromwell and his republic was the doom of all 
prospects of the reunion of the two islands ; and the subsequent 
devolution of 1688, which commenced so soon after the death 
of the Protector, left the Irish in the state in which the strug- 
gles of four hundred years with the Plantagenets and Tudors had 
placed and left them in relation to their connection with Eng- 
land — a state of antagonism and mutual repulsion, wherein the 
Irish nation, the victim of might, was slowly educated by mis- 
fortune until tlie time should come for the open acknowledg- 
ment of right. 



CHAPTER XII. 

A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. — ^THE PENAL LAWS. 

"W"iLLiAM III., of Orange, was inclined to observe, in good 
fiiitli, tlie articles agreed upon at the surrender of Limerick, 
namely, to allow tlie conquered liberty of worship, citizen rights, 
so much as remained to them of their property, and the means 
for personal safety recognized before the departure of Sarsfield 
and his men. 

The lords justices even issued a proclamation commanding 
" all officers and soldiers of the arm^s and militia, and all other 
persons whatsoever, to forbear to do any wrong or injury, or to 
use unlawful violence to any of his Majesty's subjects, whether 
of the British or Irish nation, without distinction, and that all 
persons taking the oath of allegiance, and behaving themselves 
according to law, should be deemed subjects under their Majes- 
ties' protection, and be equally entitled to the benefit of the 
law." — {Sarris^ " Life of Williajn") 

This first proclamation not having been generally obeyed, an- 
other was published denouncing " the utmost vengeance of the law 
against the offenders ;" and the author above quoted adds that 
" the satisfaction given to the Irish was a source of lasting grati- 
tude to the person and government of William." 

It is even asserted that, not only did the new monarch thus 
ratify the treaty of Limerick, but that " he inserted in the ratifica- 
tion a clause of the last importance to the Irish, which had been 
omitted in the draught signed by the lords justices and Sarsfield. 
That clause extended the benefits of the capitulation to " all such 
as were under the protection of the Irish army in the counties 
of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo. A great quantity 
of Catholic property depended on the insertion of this clause in 
the ratification, and the English Privy Council hesitated whether 
to take advantage of the omission. The honesty of the king 
declared it to be a part of the articles." 

The final confirmation was issued from "Westminster on Feb- 
ruary 24, 1692, in the name of William and Mary. 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 293 

But tlie party which had overcome the honest leanings of 
James I., if he ever had any, and of his son and grandson, was 
at this time more powerful than ever, and could not consent to 
extend the claims of justice and right to the conquered. This 
party was the Ulster colony, which Cromwell's settlement had 
spread to the two other provinces of Leinster and Munster, and 
which was confirmed in its usurpation by the weakness of the 
second Charles. The motives for the bitter animosity which 
caused it to set its face against every measure involving the 
scantiest justice toward its fellow-countrymen may be summed 
up in two words — greed and fanaticism. 

Until the time when the first of the Stuarts ascended the 
English throne, all the successive spoliations of Ireland, even the 
last under Elizabeth, at the end of the Greraldine war, were 
made to the advantage of the English nobility. Even the 
younger sons of families from Lancashire, Cheshire, and Dorset- 
shire, who " planted" Munster after the ruin of the Desmonds, 
had noble blood in their veins, and were consequently subject 
more or less to the ordinary prejudices of feudal lords. The life 
of the agriculturist and grazier was too low down in the social 
scale to catch their supercilious glance. The consequence of 
which was, that the Catholic tenants of Munster were left undis- 
turbed in their holdings. Instead of the "dues" exacted by 
their former chieftains, they now paid rent to their new lords. 

Eut the rabble let loose on the island by James I. was 
afflicted with no such dainty notions as these. To supercilious 
glances were substituted eyes keen as the Israelites', for the 
"main chance." The new planters, intent only on profit and 
gain, thought with the French peasant of an after-date, that, for 
landed estate to produce its full value, " there is nothing like the 
eye of a master." The Irish peasant was therefore removed 
from at least one-half the farms of Ulster, and driven to live as 
best he might among the Protestant lords of Munster. And 
in order to have an entirely Protestant " plantation," it became 
incumbent on the new owners so to frame the legislation as to 
deprive the Irish Catholics of any possibility of recovering their 
former possessions. Thus, laws were passed declaring null and 
void all purchases made by " Irish papists." 

Who has not witnessed, at some period in his life, the effect 
produced on the people in his neighborhood by one avaricious 
but wealthy man, intent only on increasing his property, and 
profiting by the slavish labor of the poor under his control? 
"Who has not detested, in his inmost soul, the grinding tyranny 
of the miser gloating over the hard wealth which he has wrung 
from the misery and tears of all around him, and who boasts of 
the cunning shrewdness, the success of which is only too visible 
in the desolation that encircles him ? Imagine such scenes 



294 A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

enacted througlioiit a large territory, beginning with Ulster, 
spreading thence to Munster and Connaught, and finally through 
the whole island, and we have an exact picture of the effects of 
the Protestant " plantation." Each year, almost, of the seven- 
teenth century witnessed fresh swarms of these foreign adven- 
turers settling on the island, interrupted in their operations only 
by the Confederation of Kilkenny, but multiplying faster and 
faster after the destruction of that truly national government, 
until at the time now under our consideration, " Scotch thrift," as 
it is called, had become the chief virtue of most of the owners of 
land — Scotch thrift, which is but another name for greed. 

It were easy to show, by long details, that this great charac- 
teristic of the new " plantation " would suffice to exj)lain that 
general and terrible pauperism which has since become the 
striking feature of once-happy Ireland. But only a few words 
can be allowed. 

It is the fanaticism of the new "planters" which will chiefly 
occupy our attention. These were composed, first, of the Scotch 
Presbyterians of Knox, whom James I. had dispatched, and after- 
ward of the ranting soldiers and officers of Cromwell's army, 
more Jew than Christian, since their mouths were ever filled 
with Bible texts of that particular character wherein the wrath 
of God is denounced against the impious and cruel tribes of 
Palestine. It is doubtful whether the ideas of God and man, 
promulgated and spread among the people by Calvin and Knox, 
have ever been equalled in evil consequences by the most super- 
stitious beliefs of ancient pagans. Let us look well at those 
teachings. According to them, God is the author of evil : he 
issues forth his decrees of election or reprobation, irrespective of 
merit or demerit ; inflicting eternal torments on innumerable 
souls which never could have been saved, and for whom the Son 
of God did not die. What any rational being must consider 
as the most revolting cruelty and injustice, these men called acts 
of pure justice executed by the hand of God. God saves blindly 
those whom he saves, and takes them home to his bosom, though 
reeking with the unrepented and unexpiated crimes of their 
lives — unexpiable, in fact, on the part of man — ^merely because 
they persuade themselves that they are of " the elect." 

In that system, man is a mere machine, unendowed with the 
slightest symptom of free-will, but inflated with the most over- 
bearing pride ; deemiDg all others but those of his sect the 
necessary objects of the blind wrath of God, cast oif and repro- 
bate from all eternity in the designs of Providence ; for whom 
" the elect " can feel no more pity or affection than redeemed 
men can for the arch-fiend himself, both being alike redeemless 
and unredeemed. 

1^0 system of pretended religion, invented by the perverted 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 295 

mind of man, under the inspiration of the Evil One, could go 
further in atrocity than this. 

Yet such was the pure, undiluted essence of Calvinism in its 
beginning. In our times its doctrines have been radically- 
modified, as its adherents could not escape the soothing opera- 
tions of time and calm reason. But, at the period of which we 
speak, its absurd and revolting tenets were fresh, and taken 
religiously to the letter. 

The new colonists, therefore, believed, and acted on the 
belief, that all men outside of their own body were the enemies 
of Grod and had God for their enemy. What a convenient doc- 
trine for men of an " itching palm ! " The papists, in particular, 
were worse than idolaters, and to " root them out " was only to 
render a service to God. In the event of this holy desire not 
being altogether possible of execution, the nearest approach to 
the goodly work was to strip them of all rights, and render the 
life of such reprobates more miserable than the death which was 
to condemn them to the eternal torments planned out for them 
in the eternal decrees, and so give them a foretaste here of the 
life destined for them hereafter. 

The reader, then, may understand how the Scotch Presby- 
terians of the time, overflowing as they were with free and 
republican ideas as far as regarded their own welfare, when it 
came to a question of extending the same to their Catholic 
fellow-men, if they would have admitted the term, scouted such 
a preposterous and ungodly idea. These latter were unworthy 
the enjoyment of such benefit. And thus the hoot of Protestant 
ascendency, " Protestant liberty and right ! " came up as war-cries 
to stifle out all eflbrts tending to extend even the most ordinary 
privileges of the liberty which is man's by nature, to any but 
Protestants of the same class as themselves. 

Here a curious reflection, full of meaning, and causing the 
mind almost to mock at the type of a free constitution, presents 
itself. The eighteenth century witnessed the development of 
the British Constitution as now known. It embraced in its 
bosom all British citizens, raising up the nation to the pinnacle of 
material prosperity, while at the same time and all through it, 
whole classes of citizens of the British Empire, both in Great 
Britain and Ireland, were openly, unbhishingly, legally, without 
a thought of mercy or pity — not to mention such an ugly word 
as logic — denied the protection of the common charter and the 
common rights. 

Under Cromwell the doctrines of Calvin and Ejiox did not 
show themselves quite so obtrusively. The officers and soldiers 
of his armies, in common with their general, thought the Pres- 
byterian Kirk too aristocratic and unbending. They formed a 
new sect of Independents, now called Congregationalists. But 



296 A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 

the chief feature of the new religions sj^stem became as produc- 
tive of evil to Ireland as the steril dogmas of Calvin ever conld 
be. The principle that the Scriptures constituted the only rule 
of faith was beginning to bear its fruits. It is needless to remark 
that Holy Scripture, when abandoned to the free interpretation 
of all, becomes the source of many errors, as it may be the source 
of many crimes. The historian and novelist even have ere now 
frequently told us to what purpose the " "Word of God " was 
manipulated by Scottish Covenanter and Cromwellian freebooter. 

The Covenanter, or freebooter, saw in the antagonists of 
his " real rebellion " and opposers of the designs of his dark 
policy, only the enemies of God and the adversaries of his 
Providence. He believed himself divinely commissioned to de- 
stroy Catholics and butcher innocent women and children, as the 
armies of Joshua were authorized to fight against Amalek, and 
possess themselves of a country occupied by a people whose 
cruel idolatry was ineradicable, and rendered them absolutely 
irreconcilable. Thus to the stern and odious tenets of Calvinism 
the new invaders joined the fimaticism of self-deluded Jews, 
never having received any commission from the God whom they 
blasphemed, yet bearing themselves with all the solemnity of his 
instruments. 

There is consequently nothing to surprise us in the atrocities 
committed by the Scotch troops in 1641, when they first invaded 
the island from the north, as little as there is in the numerous 
massacres which first attended the march of the troops of Crom- 
well, Ireton, and other leaders, and which were only discontinued 
when the voice of Europe rose up in revolt at the recital, and 
they themselves became thoroughly convinced that the complete 
destruction of the people was impossible, and the only next 
best thing to be done was to export as many as could be exported 
and reduce the rest to slavery. 

Thus did the new colony commence its workings, and it is 
easy to comprehend how such intensely Protestant doctrines, 
remaining implanted in the breasts of the people who came to 
make Ireland their home, could not fail to oppose an insur- 
mountable barrier to the fusion of the new and the old inhab- 
itants, and impart a fearful reality to the theory of " Protestant 
ascendency" and "Protestant liberty and right " — the liberty 
and right to oppress those of another creed. 

These watchwords form the key to the understanding of all 
the miseries and woes of Irishmen during the whole of the eigh- 
teenth century. "\Ve now turn to contemplate the commence- 
ment of the workings of this fanatic intolerance which ushered in 
the century of gloom. 

The lords justices had just returfled, after concluding the 
treaty of peace with Sarsfield, when the first mutterings of the 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 297 

thunder were heard that presaged the coming storm. Dr. Dop- 
ping, the Protestant Bishop of Meath, while preaching before 
them on the Sunday following their return to Dublin, reproached 
them openly in Christ Church for their indulgence to the Irish, 
and urged that no faith was to he hept with such a cruel and per- 
fidious race. This sort of doctrine has been heard before, and 
from men of the stamp of Dr. Dopping ; it is still heard every 
day, but it is generally thrown into the teeth of Catholics and 
saddled on them as their doctrine, however frequently refuted. 

The doctor stated broadly that with such people no treaties 
were binding, and that therefore the articles of Limerick were 
not to be observed. 

William and his Irish government endeavored to check this 
intemperance ; but the feelings of the sectarians were too ardent 
to be thus easily smothered, and the greater the opposition they 
encountered, the more they insisted on proclaiming their views, 
to which naturally they gained many adJierents among the colo- 
nists of the Protestant plantation. 

The Irish Parliament soon assembled in Dublin. The major- 
ity, imbued with the gloomy Calvinism of the times, and fearing 
to face the opposition of the respectable minority of Catholic 
members, who had come to take their seats, passed an act impos- 
ing a new oath, in contradiction to one of the articles of the 
treaty. That oath included an abjuration of James's right dejure^ 
a renunciation of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and (as 
though that were not enough to exclude Catholics) a declaration 
against the doctrine of transubstantiation and other fundamen- 
tal tenets of their creed. Persons who refused to take this oath 
were debarred from all oiRces and emoluments, as well as from 
both Houses of the Irish Parliament. 

The Catholic members were compelled to withdraw at once ; 
and no Catholic ever took part in the legislation of his own 
country from that day until the Emancipation in 1829. 

After this withdrawal, which in the times of the French Con- 
vention would have been called an e^uration, the Irish Parlia- 
ment became the bane of the country. In fact, it only repre- 
sented parliamentary England, and subjected Ireland to every 
measure required by English ultraists for the attainment of their 
selfish purposes. Possessed by a gloomy fanaticism, its main ob- 
ject was to root out of the island every vestige that remained 
of the religion which had once flourished there. All its legisla- 
tive spirit was concentrated in the two questions : Are the laws 
already in existence against the further growth of Popery rigid- 
ly enforced ? and, cannot some new law be introduced to further 
the same object ? 

Many a time were these two questions put in the assembly 
called the Irish Parliament, until near the end of the eighteenth 



298 A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 

century ; and every time some zealous Protestant member was 
found endowed with tlie fertile ingenuity requisite to invent 
some new scheme of persecution, and move for some new meas- 
ure wliich had escaped his less-gifted predecessors. 

So furious grew this spirit that in 1704, in tlie Augustan age 
of " our good Queen Anne," at the very beginning of this epoch, 
when the whole House of Commons, their Speaker at their head, 
went to present an address to the lord-lieutenant, then the 
Duke of Ormond, petitioning an increase of the penalties against 
Catholics, it is said that the party in the House which stood in 
favor of the persecuted Irish, ashamed of the spirit of oppression 
then raging, moved for measures of unexampled atrocity in 
order to defeat the bill. Among such measures was the clause 
which provided that the son of a Catholic, by "conforming," 
might render his father a mere tenant for life. But, instead of pro- 
ducing the desired effect, and opening the eyes of all to the ex- 
cess of persecution, members were only too eager to accept every 
thing proposed, whatever might b3 the extravagance of the 
measure, and thus what had been intended as an ironical jest be- 
came a bitter and cruel reality. 

Henceforth the two parties contending for power in England, 
the Whigs and Tories, came to look upon the Irish as a fit sub- 
ject for party intrigue, and the only purpose which they could 
find the much-abused nation capable of serving politically was 
as a handle for their selfish ambition. 

"With perfect justice could Matthew O'Connor say, in speak- 
ing of Somerville's " Queen Anne : " " The Tories had been 
undermined by the Duke of Marlborough, and their successors, 
the Whigs, combining transcendent talent for mischief, with an 
implacable hatred to the exiled family and their supposed adher- 
ents in Ireland, exerted all their abilities to rivet the chains of 
Catholics, and to guard against all evasion of the existing laws. 
To this party belonged the famous Earl of Wharton, immortal- 
ized in infamy by the prose of Swift and the poetry of Pope. . . . 
The outlines of his character, his sarcastic malignity, his eager- 
ness for persecution, his delight in the misery of others, may all 
be traced in his speech to the Irish Parliament of 1709 : 

" ' I am obliged,' said he, ' and directed to lay before you an- 
other consideration of infinite consequence, and that is, to put 
you in mind of the great inequality there is, in point of numbers, 
between the Protestants and Papists in this kingdom, and the 
melancholy experience you have had of the good nature of this 
sort of men^ (the Irish) ''whenever they had it in their p>ower to 
distress and destroy you. This reflection must necessarily lead 
you to think of two things : the first is, seriously to consider 
whether any new bills are wanted to explain and enforce those 
good laws which you have already for preventing the growth of 



A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 299 

Popery, and, in the next place, it makes evident the necessity 
there is of cultivating and preserving a good understanding 
among all Protestants in this kingdom.' " 

Let the reader bear in mind that language such as this, and 
its result in the shape of atrocious legislation, continued through- 
out the whole of the eighteenth century in Ireland, and he will 
find no difficulty in understanding the meaning of Edmund 
Burke's words when he said : " The code against the Catholics 
was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance ; and as well 
fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a 
people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as 
ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." And, 
elsewhere : " To render men patient under the deprivation of all 
the rights of human nature, every thing which could give them 
a knowledge and feeling of those rights was rationally forbidden. 
To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be 
degraded." 

But it is very pertinent to our purpose to give a sketch of 
those good laws, as Wharton calls them, before seeing how the 
Irish preferred to submit to them rather than lose their faith by 
" conforming." The subject has been already investigated by 
many writers, and of late far more completely than formerly. 
But the authors never presented the laws as a whole, contenting 
themselves, for the most part, by transcribing them in the chro- 
nological order in which they were enacted, or, if occasionally 
they endeavored to combine and thus present a more striking 
idea of the efiect which such laws must have produced on the 
people, they were never, as far as is known to the writer, reduced 
to a plan, and consequently fail to bring forth the efiect intended 
to be produced by them. 

It is impossible here to give the text of those various laws — 
impossible even to give a fairly accurate idea of the whole. They 
shall be classified, however, to the best of our ability, and as 
fully as circumstances permit. 

Mr. Prendergast seems to consider their ultimate object always 
to have been the robbing of the Irish of their lands, or securing 
the plunder if already in possession. That this was one of the 
great objects always kept in view in their enactment, we do not 
ieel inclined to contest ; but that it was their only or even chief 
cause, we may be allowed to question, with the greatest deference 
to the opinion of the celebrated author of the often-quoted 
" Cromwellian Settlement." 

We believe those laws to have been produced chiefly by sec- 
tarian fanaticism ; or, if some of their framers, such as Lord 
Wharton, possessed no religious feelings of any kind, and could 
not be called fanatics, their intent was to pander to the real 
fanaticism of the English people, as it existed at the time, and 



300 A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

particularly of the colony planted in Ireland, wliicli hated Popery 
to the death, and would have given all its possessions and lands 
for the destruction of the Scarlet Woman. 

In order to attain the great result proposed, the aim of the 
" penal statute " was one in its very complexity. For it had to 
deal with complex rights, which it took away one after another 
until the unity of the system was completed by the suppression 
of them all. 

We classify these under the heads of political, civil, and hu- 
man rights. The result of the whole policy was to degrade the 
Irish to the level of the wretched helots under Sparta, with this 
difference : while the slaves of the Lacedaemonians numbered but 
a few thousands, the Irish were counted by millions. 

The system, as a whole, was the work of time, and, under 
William of Orange — even under Queen Anne — it had not yet at- 
tained its maturity, though the principal and the severest meas- 
ures were carried and put in force from the very beginning. 
The ingenious little devices regarding short and small leases, the 
possession of valuable horses, etc., were mere fanciful adjuncts 
which the witty and inventive legislators of the Hanoverian dy- 
nasty were happy enough to find unrecorded in the statute- 
books, and which they had the honor of setting there, and thus 
adding a new piquancy and vigorous flavor to the whole dish. 

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, the system 
may be said to have reached its perfection. After that time it 
would, in all likelihood, have been impossible to improve further, 
and render the yoke of slavery heavier and more galling to the 
Irish. The beauty and simplicity of the whole consisted in the 
fact that the great majority of these measures were not decreed 
in so many positive and express terms against Catholics in the 
form of open and persecuting statutes. It was merely mentioned 
in the laws that, to enjoy such and such a particular right, it was 
necessary that every subject of the crown should take such and 
such an oath, which no Catholic could take. Thus, the entire 
Irish population was set between their religion and their rights, 
and at any moment, by merely taking the oath, they were at lib- 
erty to enjoy all the privileges which rendered the colonists liv- 
ing in their midst so happy and contented, and so proud of their 
" Protestant ascendency." 

It was hoped, no doubt, that, if at first and for a certain time, 
the faith of the Irish would stand proof and prompt them to sac- 
rifice every thing held dear in life, rather than surrender that 
faith, nevertheless, worn out at length, and disheartened by 
wretchedness, unable longer to sustain their heavy burden, they 
would finally succumb, and, by the mere action of such an easy 
thing as recording an oath in accordance with the law, though 
against their conscience, become men and citizens. It was what 



A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 301 

the Frencli Conventionalists of 1793 called ''^ desoler la ^atience^'* 
of their victims. 

This unholy-hope was disappointed ; and, with the exception 
of a comparatively few weak Christians among their number, the 
nation stood firm and preferred the "ignominy of the cross of 
Christ " to the enjoyments of this perishable life. 

Their political rights were, as was seen, the first to be taken 
away. The Parliament of 1691 required of its members the oath 
referred to, and for the repudiation of which, all the Catholic 
members were compelled at once to withdraw. But the con- 
trivance of swearing being found such an excellent instrument to 
use against men possessed of a conscience, the ruling body — now 
reduced to the former Protestant majority — required that the 
same oath be taken by all electors, magistrates, and officers of 
whatever grade, from the highest to the lowest in the land. 

The oath itself was an elastic formula, capable of being 
stretched or contracted, according to circumstances, so that, by 
the addition of an incidental phrase or two, it might be framed 
te meet new exigencies, and give expression to the lively imagina- 
tion of ingenious members of Parliament. It would be curious 
to collect an account of the variety of shapes it assumed, and to 
comment on the different occasions which gave rise to these 
different developments. A long history of persecuting frenzy 
might thus be condensed into a commentary of a comparatively 
few pages. Even at the so-called Catholic Emancipation it was 
not abolished ; on the contrary, it was sacredly preserved, and 
two new formulas drawn up, the one for the Protestant and the 
other for the Catholic members of the legislature, Lords and 
Commons, and so it remains, to this day, except that the most 
offensive clauses of the last century have disappeared. 

Imagine, then, the spectacle offered by the island whenever 
an election for representatives, magistrates, or petty officers, took 
place ; whenever those entitled to select holders of offices which 
were not subject to election, made known the persons of their 
choice. This vast array of aristocratic masters was chosen from 
the ranks of the English colonists, and had for its avowed object 
to preserve the Protestant ascendency, and consequently grind 
under the heel of the most abject oppression the whole mass of 
the population of the island. There was no other meaning in 
all these political combinations and changes, recurring peri- 
odically, and heralded forth by the voice of the press and the 
thunder of the hustings. Politics in Ireland was nothing else 
than the expression given to the despotism of an insignincant 
minority over almost the entire body of the people. For, despite 
all their repressive measures, the enemies of the Catholic faith 
could never pretend even to a semblance in point of numbers, 
much less to a majority, over the children of the creed taught 



302 A CEFTUEY OF GLOOM. 

by Patrick. Ireland remained Catholic throngliout ; and its 
oppressors could not fail to feel the bitter humiliation of their 
constant numerical inferiority. Hence the words quoted in the 
speech of Wharton, the lord-lieutenant. 

This has always been the ease, in spite of the combination of 
a multitude of circumstances adverse to the spread of the Cath- 
olic population. It may not be amiss to give room for the statis- 
tics and remarks of Abbe Perraud on this most interesting 
subject, contained in his book on " Ireland under British rule." 

"In 1672, the total population of Ireland was 1,100,000 (it is 
to be remembered that this was after the massacres and trans- 
portations of Cromwell's period). Of that number 

800,000 were Catholics. 
50,000 " Dissenters. 
150,000 " Church-of-Ireland men. 

" In 1727, the Anglican Primate of Ireland, Boulter, Arch- 
bishop of Armagh, wrote to his English colleague, the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, that ' we have, in all probability, in this 
kingdom, at least five Papists for every Protestant.' Those pro- 
portions are confirmed by official statistics under Queen Anne. 

"In 1740, according to a kind of official census, confirmed by 
"Wakefield, the number of Protestant heads of families did not 
exceed 96,067. 

" Twenty-six years later, the Dublin House of Lords caused 
a comparative table of Protestant and Catholic families to be 
drawn up for each county. The result was the following : 

Protestant families 130,263 

Catholic " 305,680 

" In 1834, exact statistical returns being made of the members 
of each communion, the following was the result : The total 
population being estimated at 7,943,940, the Church-of-Ireland 
members amounted only to the number of 852,064. The remain- 
ing 7,091,876 were thus divided : 

Presbyterians 642,350 

Other Dissenters 21,808 

Catholics 6,427,718 

" The censuses of 1841 and 1851 contained no information 
upon this important question. Thirty years had therefore 
elapsed since official figures had given the exact proportions of 
each Church. 

" This silence of the Blue Books had given rise, among the 
Protestant press of England and Ireland, to the opinion, too 
hastily adopted on the Continent by publicists of great weight, 
that emigration and famine had resulted in the equalization of 



A OENTUEY OF GLOOM. 303 

the numbers of Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. The 
evident conclusion joyfully drawn from this supposed fact by the 
defenders of the Anglican Church was, that the scandal of a 
Protestant establishment in the midst and at the expense of a 
Catholic people was gradually dying away. 

" The forlorn hope of the Tory and Orange press went still 
further. They boldly disputed Ireland's right to the title of 
Catholic. So, although, ten years and twenty years before, these 
same journals furiously opposed the admission of religious de- 
nominations into the statistics of the census, yet, when the census 
of 1861 drew near, they quite as loudly demanded its insertion. 
They made it a matter of challenge to the Catholics. 

"" The ultramontane journals accepted the challenge. The 
Catholics unanimously demanded a denominational census. The 
results were submitted to the representatives of the nation in 
July, 1861. 'No shorter, more decisive, or more triumphant 
answer could have been given to the sarcSsms and challenges of 
the old Protestant party." 

We confine ourselves here to the total sums, leaving out 
minor details : 

Catholics 4,490,583 

Establishment 687,661 

Dissenters 595,577 

Jews 322 

Thus in this century, as throughout the whole of the century 
of gloom, the island is truly and really Catholic. 

By way of contrast, a few words on the same subject may not 
be out of place with reference to England. We have already 
stated, and given some of the reasons for so doing, that, at the 
death of Elizabeth, England was already Protestant to the core. 

In his " Memoirs,"" vol. ii.. Sir John Dalrymple has^ pub- 
lished a curious oflScial report of the numbers of Catholics in 
England, in the reign of William of Orange, found after his death 
in the iron chest of that vigilant monarch. From this authentic- 
document we take the following extract : 

JVumber of FTeeholders in England.^ 

Conformists. Non-Conformists. Papists. 

Province of Canterbury, 2,123,362 93,151 11,878 

Province of York, . 353,892 15,525 1,978 

Totals . . 2,477,254 108,676 13,856 

It is known also that, imder George III., the number of Cath- 
olics in the whole of Great Britain did not exceed sixty thou- 

^ Dr. Madden's " Penal Laws." 



i 



304 A OENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

sand, so thorougli had been the separation of England from the 
true Church. 

To return to the ostracism of a whole nation from its politi- 
cal rights. 'No individual really belonging to it could take the 
slightest share in the administration of its affairs. They were 
all left to the control of aliens, whose boast it was that they 
were English, and whose chief object was to secure English as- 
cendency, and subject every thing Irish to the rule of force. 

Yet all this while a new era was dawning on the world ; a 
multitude of voices were proclaiming new social and political 
doctrines ; all were to be free, to possess privileges that might 
not be intrenched upon — to wit, a voice in the affairs of the na- 
tion, trial by their peers, no taxation without due representation, 
and the like — while a whole nation by the unanimous consent 
of the loudest of these freedom-mongers was excluded from 
every benefit of the new ideas, was literally placed in bondage, 
and left without the possibility of being heard and admitted to 
the enjoyment of the common rights, because the one voice 
which would have declared in their favor, which in former times 
had so often and so loudly spoken, when so to speak was to 
offend the powers of this world, was deprived of the right of be- 
ing heard. The doctrine that the Papal supremacy was a 
usurpation, and the Pope himself an enemy of freedom, was laid 
down as a cardinal principle. After such public renunciation of 
former doctrines, all these new and so-called liberal theories were 
a mere delusion and a snare. There was no possibility of effect- 
ually securing freedom, in spite of so much promised to all and 
granted to some ; no possibility of really protecting the rights of 
all. The public right newly proclaimed ended finally in might. 
Majorities ruled despotically over the minorities, and, as the des- 
potism of the multitude is ever harsher and more universal than 
that of any monarch, the reign of cruel injustice was let in 
upon Ireland. And in her case the injustice was peculiarly 
aggravated, inasmuch as it was a small alien minority which 
trampled under foot the rights of a great native majority. 

But, although the deprivation of political rights is perhaps 
more fatal to a nation than that of any other, on account of what 
follows in its train, particularly in the framing of the laws, never- 
theless the deprivation of civil rights is generally more acutely 
felt, because the grievances resulting from it meet man at every 
turn, at every moment of his life, in his household and domestic 
circle. In fact, the penal laws stripped Catholics of every civil 
right which modern society can conceive, and it was chiefly there 
that the ingenuity of their oppressors labored during the greater 
part of a century to make a total wreck of Irish welfare. 

Those rights may be classified generally as the right of pos- 
sessing and holding landed property, the right of earning an 



A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 305 

honorable living by profession or trade, the right of protection 
against injustice by equal laws, the right of fair trial before con- 
demnation : such are the chief. It is doubtful if there is any 
thing of importance left of which a citizen can be deprived, un- 
less indeed he be openly and unjustly deprived of life. 

It has been already indicated how the policy of England, 
with regard to Ireland, from that first invasion, in the time of 
Henry II., was prompted by the desire of gaining possession of 
the soil, and how after seven hundred years of struggle it suc- 
ceeded in attaining its object ; so that the whole island had been 
confiscated, and in some instances two or three times over. The 
object of the penal laws, therefore, could not be to deprive the 
Irish of the land which they no longer possessed, but to prevent 
them acquiring any land in any quantity whatever, and from re- 
entering into possession, by purchase or otherwise, of any por- 
tion of their own soil and of the estates which belonged to their 
ancestors. So harsh and cunning a design, we doubt not, never 
entered the minds of any former legislators, even in pagan an- 
tiquity. 

The great stimulus to exertion in civil society consists of the 
acquisition of property, chiefly of land. In feudal times seigno- 
rial estates could be purchased by none but those of noble 
blood ; but with allodial estates it was different all through Eu- 
rope. Yet just at the time when feudal laws were passing into 
disuse the Irish were prevented, by carefully-drawn enactments, 
from purchasing even a rood of their native soil. " The prohi- 
bition had been already extended to the whole nation by the 
Commonwealth government, and when the lands forfeited by the 
wars of 1690 came to be sold at Chichester House in 1703, the 
Irish were declared by the English Parliament incapable of pur- 
chasing at the auction, or of taking a lease of more than two 
acres." — {Prendergast?) 

The same author adds in a note : " But it was when the es- 
tate was made the property of the first Protestant discoverer, 
that animation was put into this law. Discoverers then became 
like hounds upon the scent after lands secretly purchased by the 
Irish. Gentlemen fearing to lose their lands, found it now neces- 
sary to conform — ^namely, to abjure Catholicism. Between 1703 
and 1709 there were only thirty-six conformers in Ireland ; in 
the next ten years (after the Discovery Act), the conformists 
were one hundred and fifty." 

But the full object was not only to prevent the Irish from be- 
coming even moderately rich in land ; they were to be reduced 
to actual pauperism. Hence the prohibitory laws did not stop 
at this first outrage ; almost impossible occurrences were supposed 
and provided for, lest there might be a chance of their realization 
at some time. It was actually provided that, if the produce of 
20 



306 A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

their farms broiiglit a greater profit to the Irish than was ex- 
pected, notwithstanding all these measures against the possible 
occurrence of such an evil, the lease was void, and the " discov- 
erer " should receive the amount. 

There was no loop-hole by which the people might escape 
from this degradation. But there was still the chance left of en- 
gaging in trade, acquiring personal property by its practice, and 
becoming the owners of a sum of money in bank, or of a dwell- 
ing-house in the city. . The English law of succession was un- 
derstood to be a law for all, and consequently, in some out-of-the- 
way crises, a stray Irish family might be found in course of time 
with an elder branch possessed of a fair amount of property, and 
able to emerge from the dead level of the common misery. Such 
a possibility could not of course be permitted by the English col- 
onists who ruled the land. So the law of gavelkind, to which 
the Irish had at one time been so attached, was now to be forced 
upon them, and upon them alone of all the British subjects. It 
was decreed that, upon the death of every Irishman, whatever of 
personal property he left behind him was to be divided equally 
among all his children, who, being generally numerous, would 
each receive but a trifle, and so perpetuate the pauperism of the 
race. 

Where the surprise, then, in finding the whole nation reduced 
since that time to a state of the most abject poverty? It was the 
will of the rulers that so it should be, and their scheme, guarded 
and enforced by so many legislative acts, could not fail to succeed 
in producing the effect intended. Granting even the smallest 
amount of truth in what is so often flung at the Irish as a 
reproach — their carelessness and want of foresight — how could it 
be otherwise, to what cause can such failings, even if they exist, 
be assigned, save to the utter impossibility of succeeding in any 
eflort which they chose to make ? 

The true origin of the state in which the Irish at home now 
appear to the eyes of foreign travellers, is the deliberate intention, 
sternly acted upon for more than a century, to make the island 
one vast poorhouse. 

The wretched situation in which they have ever since re- 
mained, confessed by all to be without parallel on earth, is cer- 
tainly not to be laid at the door of the present population of 
England, nor even to the colony still intrenched on Irish soil ; 
but with what right can it be brought forward as a reproach 
against the Irish themselves, when its real cause is so evident, 
and when history speaks so plainly on the subject ? 

All sensible Englishmen of our days will readily acknowl- 
edge that, without indulging in mutual recrimination, the duty 
of "all is to repair the injuries of the past, and to do away with 
the last remnants of its sad consequences. Wounds so deep and 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 307 

many in a nation cannot be liealed by half-measures ; and it is 
only a thorough change of system, and a complete reversal of 
legislation, that can leave the English of to-day without reproach. 

Pauperism, then, is the necessary misfortune, not the crime 
of Ireland ; we may even go further, and assert that, if millions 
of Irishmen have lived and died paupers, owing to the barbarous 
laws enacted for that special purpose, few indeed among them 
have been reduced even by hard necessity and the extreme of 
misery to manifest a pauper spirit and a miserly bent. 

There is no doubt that the almost invariable result of suifering 
and want is to create selfishness in the sufferer, and cause him to 
cling desperately to the little he may possess. Self-preservation 
and self-indulgence, in such a case, form the law of human na- 
ture, and no one even expects to find a really poor man gener- 
ous, when he can scarcely meet his bare necessities and tlie im- 
perious wants of his family. It is the peculiarity of the Irish to 
know how to combine generosity with the deprivation almost of 
the common necessaries of life. When masters of their own soil, 
a large hospitality and a free-handed " bestowing of gifts " — such, 
we believe, was the Irish expression — was universal among them ; 
the poorest clansman would have been ashamed not to imitate, 
in his degree, the liberal spirit of his prince. They often gave 
all they had, regardless of the future ; and, when their chieftains 
demanded of the clansmen what the Book of Rights imposed 
upon them, their exclamation was, " Spend me but defend me." 

Though the people of Erin have been reduced to the sad 
necessity of forgetting that old proverb of the nation, the spirit 
which gave rise to it lives in their hearts and is proved by their 
deeds. What other nation, even the richest and most prosperous, 
could have accomplished what the world has seen them bring to 
pass during this century ? The laws which, so long ago, for- 
bade them to be generous, and prohibited them from providing 
openly for the worship of their God, for the education of their 
children, for the help of the sick and needy among them, have at 
last been made inoperative by their oppressors. But, when they 
were at length left free to follow the freedom and generosity of 
their hearts, they found — what ? In their once beautiful and 
Christian country, a universal desolation ; the blackened ruins of 
what had been their abbeys, churches, hospitals, and asylums ; 
the very ground on which they stood stolen away from them, and 
the Protestant establishment in full enjoyment of the revenues of 
the Catholics. They found every thing in the same state that they 
had known for centuries. Kothing Avas restored to them. They 
were at liberty to spend what they did not possess, since they were 
as poor as men could be. Every thing had to be done by them tow- 
ard the reestablishing of their churches, schools, and various asy- 
lums, and they had nothing wherewith to do it. 



308 A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

There is no need of going item by item over what they did. 
The j)resent prosperous state of the Irish Catholic public institu- 
tions — churches, schools, and all — is owing to their poorly-filled 
pockets. God alone knows how it all came about. We can only 
see in them the poor of Christ, rich in all gifts, " even alms-deeds 
most abundant." 

It is only too evident that the degradation which the English 
wished to fasten upon them forever, could not be accomplished 
even by the measures best adapted to debase a people. The 
Celtic nature rose superior to the dark designs of the most in- 
genious opponents, and continued as ever noble, generous, and 
open-hearted. Nevertheless, the sufferings of the victims were 
at times unutterable ; and one of the inevitable effects of such 
tyrannical measures soon made itself fearfully active and destruc- 
tive in the shape of those periodical famines which have ever 
since devastated the island. 

In the days of her own possession, there was never mention 
of famine there. The whole island teemed with the grain of her 
fields, consumed by a healthy population, and was alive with 
vast herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. "What were the heca- 
tombs of ancient Greece compared with the thousands of kine 
prescribed annually by th"fe Book of Rights ? "Who ever heard of 
people perishing of want in the midst of abundance such as this ? 
Even during the fiercest wars, waged by clan against clan, we 
often see the image of death in many shapes, but never that 
of a large population reduced to roots and grass for food. 

When, later on, the wars of the Reformation transformed 
Munster into a wilderness, and we read for the first time in Irish ■ 
history of people actually turning green and blue, according to 
the color of the unwholesome weeds they were driven to devour 
in order to support life, at least it was in the wake of a terrible 
war that famine came. It was reserved for the eighteenth cen- 
tury to disclose to us the woful spectacle of a people perishing 
of starvation in the midst of the profoundest peace, frequently of 
the greatest plenty, the food produced in abundance by the labor 
of the inhabitants being sold and sent off to foreign countries to 
enrich absentee landlords. Nay, those desolating famines at last 
grew to be periodical, so that every few years people expected 
one, and it seemed as though Ireland were too barren to produce 
the barely sufficient supply of food necessary for her scanty 
population. The people worked arduously and without inter- 
mission ; the land was rich, the seasons propitious ; yet they 
almost constantly suffered the pangs of hunger, which spread 
sometimes to wholesale starvation. This was another result of 
those laws devised by the English colonists to keep down the 
n-ative population of the island, and prevent it from becoming 
troublesome and dangerous. Such was the effect of the humane 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM, 309 

measures taken to preserve the glory of Protestant ascendency, 
and secure the rights and liberties of a handful of alien masters. 

It is proper to describe some of those awful scourges, which 
have never ceased since, and at sight of which, in our own days, 
we have too often sickened. For the Emancipation of 1829 was 
far from removing all the causes of Irish misery. On the 17th 
of March, 1T27, Boulter, the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, 
wrote to the Duke of JSTewcastle : " Since my arrival in this 
country, the famine has not ceased among the poor people. The 
dearness of corn last year was such that thousands of families had 
to quit their dwellings, to seek means of life elsewhere ; many 
hundred perished." 

At the same period Swift wrote : " The families of farmers 
who pay great rents, live in filth and nastiness, on buttermilk 
and potatoes." 

The following is a short and simple description of the famine 
of 1741, given by an eye-witness, and copied by Matthew O'Con- 
nor from a pamphlet entitled " Groans of Ireland," published in 
the same year : 

" Having been absent from this country some years, on my 
return to it last summer, I found it the most miserable scene of 
distress that I ever read of in history. "Want and misery on 
every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads spread 
with dead and dying bodies ; mankind the color of the docks 
and, nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimes more, 
on a car, going to the grave for want of bearers to carry them, 
and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they 
perished. The universal scarcity was followed by fluxes and 
malignant fevers, which swept ofl:' multitudes of all sorts, so that 
whole villages were laid waste. If one for every house in the 
kingdom died — and that is very probable — the loss must be up- 
ward of four hundred thousand souls. If only half, a loss too 
great for this ill-peopled country to bear, as they are mostly 
working people. When a stranger travels through this country, 
and beholds its wide, extended, and fertile plains, its great flocks 
of sheep and black cattle, and all its natural wealth and conven- 
iences for tillage, manufacture, and trade, he must be astonished 
that such misery and want should be felt by its inhabitants." 

At the time these lines were written, the astonishment was 
sincere, and the answer to the question " How can this be ? " 
seemed impossible ; the phenomenon utterly inexplicable. In 
our own days, when this same picture of woe has been so often 
presented in the island, the reasons for it are well known ; and 
what seems inexplicable is that, the cause being so clear, and 
the remedy so simple, the remedy has not yet been thoroughly 
applied. 

In 1756 and 1757, the same scenes were repeated, with the 



310 A OENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

same friglitful results. Charles O'Connor, at that time the cham- 
pion of his much-abused countrymen, wrote thus, in his letter to 
Dr. Curry, May 21, 1Y56 : 

" Two-thirds of the inhabitants are perishing for want of 
bread; meal is come to eighteen-pence a stone, and, if the poor 
had money, it would exceed by — I believe — double that sum. 
Every place is crowded with beggars, who were all house-keepers 
a fortnight ago, and this is the condition of a country which 
boasts of its constitution, its laws, and the wisdom of its legis- 
lature." 

These words, although sweeping enough, and universally 
applicable, are far from conveying to our minds, to-day, the real 
picture of the state of the country. When the writer speaks of 
" meal," it must be understood to mean rye, oats, and, barley ; 
and even this coarse and heavy food being, as he remarks, in- 
• accessible to the poor, potatoes had become the only hread of the 
country, and the inhabitants were perishing for the want of it. 

For the first time in the history of the two nations, the Eng- 
lish Government thought of relieving the distress of the people, 
and to this purpose applied the magnificent sum of twenty 
thousand pounds. Such was the generous amount granted by a^ 
wealthy and prosperous country to procure food for the inhabi- 
tants of an island as large as Ireland is known to be. As to 
eifecting any change in the laws, which were really the cause of 
this unutterable misery, such an idea never entered into the 
heads of the legislators. Hence it is not surprising to hear that 
" the distress in the interior of the country revived the frightful 
image of the miseries of 1741, nor did the calamity cease, until 
the equilibrium between the population and the means of subsist- 
ence was restored by the accumulated waste of famine and 
pestilence ; " that is to say, until all those had been destroyed 
whom the laws of the time could, as they had been designed 
to do, destroy. 

These details appear calculated only to shock the feelings of 
the reader, already sufiiciently acquainted with the lot of the 
Irish cottier and laborer, from the beginning of the last century. 
ISTevertheless, we cannot close this part of our subject without 
giving publicity to the following description of the mass of the 
Irish population in 1Y62, by Matthew O'Connor : 

" The popery laws had, in the course of half a century, con- 
summated the ruin of the lower orders. Their habitations, 
visages, dress, and despondency, exhibited the deep distress of a 
people ruled with the iron sceptre of conquest. The lot of the 
negro slave, compared with that of the Irish helot, was happiness 
itself. Both were subject to the capricious cruelty of mercenary 
task-masters and unfeeling proprietors ; but the negro slave was 
well-fed, well clothed, and comfortably lodged. The Irish peasant 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 311 

was half starved, lialf naked, and half housed ; the canopy of 
heaven being often the only roof to the mud-built walls of his 
cabin. The fewness of negroes gave the West India proprietor 
an interest in the preservation of his slave ; a superabundance 
of helots superseded all interest in the comfort or preservation of 
an Irish cottier. The code had eradicated every feeling of 
humanity, and avarice sought to stifle every sense of justice. 
That avarice was generated by' prodigality, the hereditary vice 
of the Irish gentry, and manifested itself in exorbitant rack- 
rents wrung from their tenantry, and in the low wages paid for 
their labor. Since the days of King William, the price of the 
necessaries of life had trebled, and the day's hire — fourpence — 
had continued stationary. The oppression of tithes was little 
inferior to the tyranny of rack-rents ; while the great landholder 
was nearly exempt from this pressure, a tenth of the produce of 
the cottier's labor was exacted for the purpose of a religious 
establishment from which he derived no benefit. . . The peasant 
had no resource : hot trade or manufactures — they were dis- 
couraged ; not emigration to France — the vigilance of govern- 
ment precluded foreign enlistment ; not emigration to America 
— his poverty precluded the means. Ireland, the land of his 
birth, became his prison, where he counted the days of his 
misery in the deepest despondency." 

Is it to be wondered at that conspiracies, secret associations, 
and insurrections, were the result ; or should the wonder be 
that such commotions were less universal and prolonged ? 

The craving of hunger is perpetual in Ireland. Multitudes 
of details from a multitude of different and independent sources 
might be brought forward to show this. 

Duvergier de Ilauranne, a Frenchman who visited the island 
in 1826, writes: "Ireland is the land of anomalies; the most 
deplorable destitution on the richest of soils. . . . ITowhere does 
man live in such wretchedness. The Irish peasant is born, 
suffers, and dies — such is life for him." 

In 1836, Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare, being asked what was 
the state of the population, wrote : " What it has always been ; 
people are perishing as usual." 

In 184:3, Mr. Thackeray, as little a friend to Ireland as he was 
a foe to his own country, recounting what he saw in his travels, 
said that, in the south and west of the island, the traveller had 
before him the spectacle of a people dying of hunger, and that 
by millions, in the very richest counties. 

There is no need of repeating what has been written of the 
fearful scourge that swept over the country in 1846 and 1847. 
The details are too harrowing. At last even the London Times 
had to acknowledge the cause of these calamities : " The ulcer 
of Ireland drains the resources of the empire. It was to be ex- 



312 A OENTIJEY OF GLOOM. 

pected tliat it should be so. The people of England have most 
culpably and foolishly connived at a national iniquity. Without 
going back beyond the Union (in 1800), and only within the last 
half-century, it has been notorious all that time that Ireland 
was the victim of an unexampled social crime. The landlords 
exercise their rights there with a hand of iron, and deny their 
duty wdth a brow of brass. Age, infirmity, sickness, every weak- 
ness, is there condemned to death. The w^hole Irish people is 
debased by the spectacle and contact of beggars and of those who 
notoriously die of hunger ; and England stupidly winked at this 
tyranny. We begin now to expiate a long course of neglect. 
Such is the law of justice. If we are asked why we have to sup- 
port half the population of Ireland, the answer lies in the ques- 
tion itself; it is that we have deliberately allowed them to be 
crushed into a nation of beggars ! " 

The writers of the Times laid the true cause of that appalling 
misfortune at the door of the landlords. They would not trace 
back the origin of the evil beyond 1800 '. they could not or 
would not appreciate the Christian heroism displayed by the na- 
tion while under the infliction of such a fatal scourge. But it 
must not be forgotten by all admirers of virtue that, in the 
midst of a distress which bafiles description, many of the victims 
of famine were at the same time martyrs to honesty and faith. 
" Come here and let us die together," said a wife to her husband, 
"rather than touch what belongs to another." 

The civil right of acquiring land and enjoying its products 
has so far been the only one considered by us ; and the subject 
has been entered upon at some length, as agriculture has at all 
times formed the chief occupation of the L'ish people. But the 
penal laws embraced many other objects ; and, as their intent 
was evidently to debase the people and reduce it to a state of act- 
ual slavery and want, other civil rights w^ere equally invaded by 
their tyrannical provisions. 

A portion of the population in all countries devotes itself to 
the intellectual pursuits necessary for the life of every cultivated 
nation. Whoever chooses must have the right of devoting his 
life to the professions of medicine and law, of entering the Church 
or the army, if his tastes run in any one of those directions. 
Not so in Catholic Ireland. The oath to be taken by every bar- 
rister prevented the Catholic Irishman from devoting his powers 
to such a purpose. There was only one Church for him, and 
that one proscribed. In the army not only could he not attain 
to any rank, but he was not allowed to enter it even as a private, 
the holding of a musket being prohibited to him. So that, 
through mere fanatical hatred of every thing Catholic, England 
deprived herself for a whole century of the services of a people, 
forming to-day more than half of her army and navy, ^hose 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 313 

efforts have helped to cover her flag with honor, and whose mem- 
orable absence from the English ranks at Fontenoy wrung that 
bitter expression from the heart of George II. when the victori- 
ous tide of the English battle was rolled back by the Irish bri- 
gade, " Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects ! " 

These few words are enough to show that the penal laws 
were in reality a decree of outlawry against the Irish — stamp- 
ing them, not as true subjects, but as mere slaves and helots, fit 
only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water at the bidding 
of their lords and masters. 

But there are mere human rights, inalienable in man, and 
sacred among all nations, which were trampled upon in that des- 
olated land together with all inferior rights. Such are the rights 
of worshipping God, of properly educating children, of preserv- 
ing a just subordination in the family and promoting harmony 
and happiness among its members. These natural rights were 
more openly and shamelessly violated, if that were possible, than 
all others ; and this in itself would have made the eighteenth 
century one of gloom and woe for Irishmen. 

It was for their religion chiefly that the Irish had undergone 
all the calamities and scourges which have been described. Had 
they only, at the very beginning of the Reformation, bowed to 
the new dogma of the spiritual supremacy of the English kings ; 
had they a little later accepted the Thirty-nine Articles of Queen 
Elizabeth; had they, at a subsequent epoch, joined in chorus 
with the Scotch Presbyterians, and given the Bible as their au- 
thority for all kinds of absurdities and atrocities, mental and 
moral ; had they, in a word, as they remarked to Sussex, changed 
their religion four times in twelve years, they would have es- 
caped the wrath of Henry YIII., the crafty and cruel policy of 
Elizabeth, the shifty expediency of the Stuarts, the barbarity of 
the Cromwellian era, and finally the ingenious atrocities of the 
penal laws. 

Even if, in the midst of some of the extremities to which 
they had been reduced, they had at any time resolved to conform 
and take the oaths prescribed, all their miseries would have been 
at an end, and their immediate admission to all the rights and 
privileges of British citizens secured. From time to time, in in- 
dividual cases, they witnessed the sudden and magical effect pro- 
duced by conformity on the part of those who gave up resistance 
altogether, and who, from whatever motive, bowed to the inevi- 
table conditions on which men were admitted to live peaceably on 
Irish soil, and to the enjoyment of the blessings of this life ; 
such condition being — the abjuration of Catholicity. But so few 
were found to take advantage of this easy chance forever held 
.out to them, that a man might well wonder at their constancy 
did he not reflect that they set their duty to God above all 



314 A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 

things. The fact is patent — they had a conscience, and knew 
what it meant. 

Having then surrendered their all for the sake of their reli- 
gion, the free exercise of that might at least have been left them ; 
and since the choice lay between the two alternatives of enjoying 
the natural right of worshipping their God or submitting to all 
the sacrifices previously mentioned (seemingly the meaning of 
the various oaths prescribed by law), it can only be looked iipon 
as an additional cruelty to violently deprive them of what they 
chose to preserve at all cost. But the authors of the statutes did 
not see the matter in this light. They could not lose such an 
opporttmity of inflicting new tortures on their victims ; on the 
contrary, they would have considered all their labor lost had 
they not endeavored to coerce the very thing least subject to co- 
ercion, the religious feeling of the human soul. Accordingly, 
the resolution was taken to deprive them of every possible facil- 
ity for the exercise of their religion, that the fire within might 
give no sign of its warmth. 

Ti'ue, the Irish Catholics were not, as the Christians under 
the edicts of old Rome, to be summoned before the public courts 
and there abjure their religion or die. It is strange that the 
rulers of Ireland stopped short at this ; that they invented 
nothing in their laws at least equivalent, unless the statutes that 
compelled every person under fine to be present at Protestant 
worship on Sundays be interpreted to mean, what it very much 
resembles, an attempt at coercion of the very soul. Still there 
was no edict openly proscribing the name of Catholic, and pun- 
ishing its bearer with death. 

But the measures adopted and actually enforced were in 
reality equivalent, and would more efiectually than any pagan 
edict have produced the same result, if the Irish race had shown 
the least wavering in their traditional steadiness of purpose. 

The first of the measures devised for this end would have 
been completely efficacious with any other people or race. It 
was a twofold measure : 1. All bishops, priests, and monks, were 
to depart from the kingdom, liable to capital punishment should 
they return. 2. All laymen were to be compelled to assist at 
the Protestant service every Sunday, under penalty of a fine for 
each ofience : the fine mounting with the repetition of the 
offence, so that, in the end, it would reach an enormous sum. 
Only let such a policy as this be persevered in for a quarter of a 
century in any country on earth except Ireland, and, in that 
country, the Catholic religion will cease to exist. 

" The Catholic clergy," says Matthew O'Connor — and the 
reader will remember he was a witness of what he described — 
" submitted to their hard destiny with Christian resignation. 
They repaired to the seaport towns fixed for their embarcation, 



A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 315 

and took an everlasting farewell of their country and friends, of 
every thing dear and valuable in this world. Many of them 
were descending in the vale of years, and must have been 
anxious to deposit their bones with the ashes of their ancestors ; 
they were now transported to foreign lands, where they would 
find no fond breast to rely upon, no ' pious tear ' to attend their 
obsequies. Yet their enemies could not deprive them of the 
consolations of religion : that first-born off'spring of Heaven still 
cheered them in adversity and exile, smoothed the rugged path 
of death, and closed their last faltering accents with benedic- 
tions on their country, and prayers for their persecutors. 

" Such as were apprehended after the time limited for depor- 
tation, were loaded with irons and imprisoned until transported, 
to attest, on some foreign shore, the weakness of the govern- 
ment, and the cruelty of their countrymen. Some few, disabled 
from age and infirmities from emigration, sought shelter in 
caves, or implored and received the concealment of Protestants, 
whose humane feelings were superior to their prejudices, and 
who atoned, in a great degree, by their generous sympathy, for 
the wanton cruelty of their party. 

" The clause inflicting the punishment of death on such as 
should return from exile was suited only for the sanguinary days 
of Tiberius or Domitian, and shocked the humanity of an en- 
lightened age. "William of Orange, whose necessities compelled 
him to give his sanction to the clause, would never consent to 
its execution." 

ISTevertheless, it was afterward enforced on several occasions, 
and, during the whole century of penal laws, it not only remained 
on the statute-book ad terrorem, but whatever clegyman disre- 
garded it could only expect to be treated with its utmost rigor. 
From Captain South's account, it appears that in 1698 the num- 
ber of clergy in Ireland consisted of four hundred and ninety-five 
regulars and eight hundred and ninety-two seculars ; and the 
number of regulars shipped off that year to foreign parts 
amounted to lour hundred and twenty-four — namely, from 
Dublin, one hundred and fifty-three ; from Galway, one hundred 
and ninety; from Cork, seventy-five; and twenty-six from 
Waterford. 

But such a measure was of too sweeping a character to be 
carried out to the letter ; many of the proscribed priests, seculars 
for the most part, escaped the pursuit of the government spies, 
and remained concealed in the country. The bishops had all 
been obliged to fly ; but a few years later, under Anne, several 
returned, for they knew that, without the exercise of their reli- 
gious functions, the Catholic religion must have perished ; and, 
in order that they might continue the succession of the priest- 
hood, confirm the children, and encourage the people to stand 



316 A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 

firm in their faitli, tliey ran the hazard of the gibbet. Of this 
fact the persecutors soon became aware, and the Commons of 
Ireland declared openly that " several popish bishops had lately 
come into the kingdom, and exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
within the same, and continued the succession of the Eomish 
priesthood by ordaining great numbers of popish clergymen, and 
that their return was owing to defect in the laiosP 

To cover this defect, they invented the " registry law." They 
did not state in express terms their intention of exporting them 
again, but their object was clearly manifested by the subsequent 
enactment of 1T04. By the registry law " all popish priests then 
in the kingdom should, at the general quarter sessions in each 
county, register their places of abode, age, parishes, and time of 
ordination, the names of the respective bishops who ordained 
them, and give security for their constant residence in their 
respective districts, under penalty of imprisonment and trans- 
portation, and of being treated as ' high traitors ' in case of 
return." 

It is clear that, with the execution of this law, the exertions 
of the police and of informers would have been superfluous, as 
the clergy were comjjelled to act as their own police and inform 
on themselves. The act, moreover, seems to have been prepared 
with a view to another bill, which was soon after passed, for 
total expulsion. It was therefore nothing else than a prelimi- 
nary measure devised to insure the success of this second act, and 
prevent the recurrence of the former " defect in the laws." 

A new explanatory statute was accordingly drawn up, re- 
quiring the clergy to take the oath of abjuration before the 23d 
of March, 1710, under the penalties of transportation for life, and 
of high-treason if ever after found in the country. This bill, 
then, set them the alternative of abandoning either their country 
or their principles. 

At the same time, for the encouragement of informers, the 
Commons resolved that " the prosecuting and informing against 
papists was an honorable service." Never before had a like 
declaration issued from any body in any nation, least of all by 
legislators, in favor of the confessedly meanest of all occupations ; 
and it is doubtful if the most tyrannical of the Roman Cassars 
would ever have thought of mentioning the " honorable service " 
of the delatores whom they employed for the speedy destruction 
of those whose wealth they coveted. " Genus hominum,^^ says 
Tacitus, '■'■ jpiibliGO exitio repertwn.''^ 

While on this subject, it has been remarked that most of 
the Irish informers amassed wealth by their bills of " discovery," 
whereas those of the days of Tiberius generally fell victims to 
their own artifices. 

The eagerness for blood-money tracked the clergy to their 



A OENTUKY OF GLOOM. 317 

loneliest retreats, and dragged them thence before persecuting 
tribunals, by whose sentence they were doomed to per]3etual 
banishment. They must all have finally disappeared from the 
island, if the people, at last grown indignant at such baseness 
and cruelty, had not, by the loudness of their execrations, 
checked the activity of the priest -hunters. Wherever they dared 
show themselves, they were pelted with stones, and exposed to 
the summary vengeance of a maddened people. 

The detestable " profession " became at last so infamous and 
unprofitable that foreign Jews were almost the only ones found 
willing to undertake this " honorable service ; " and it is stated 
in the "Historia Dominicana," that one Garzia, a Portuguese 
Jew, was the most active of those human blood-hounds, and 
that, in 1718, he contrived to have seven of the proscribed clergy 
detected and apprehended. 

"VYe cannot speak of the most revolting measure ever in- 
tended to be taken against Catholic priests ; namely mutilation, 
so long and with such energy denied by Protestants, who were 
themselves indignant at the mere mention of it, but now clearly 
proved by the archives of France, where documents exist show- 
ing that the non-enactment of such an infamy was solely due 
to the severe words of remonstrance sent to England by the 
Duke of Orleans, regent of France during the minority of 
Louis XY. 

As late as the middle of the century, in 1744, a sudden in- 
crease of rigor took place ; intentions of conspiracy were as- 
cribed to Catholics as usual, and without any motive whatever, 
unless it was caused by the sight of some religious houses, which 
had been quietly and unobtrusively reopened during the few 
years previous. All at once the government issued a proclama- 
tion for " the suppression of monasteries, the apprehension of 
ecclesiastics, the punishment of magistrates remiss in the execu- 
tion of the laws, and the encouragement of spies and informers 
by an increase of reward." 

It was a repetition of the old story ; a cruel persecution broke 
out in every part of the island. From the country priests fied 
to the metropolis, seeking to hide themselves amid the multitude 
of its citizens. Others tied to mountains and caverns, and the 
holy sacrifice was again offered up in lone places under the bare 
heavens, with sentinels to watch for the " prowling of the wolf," 
and no other outward dignity than that the grandeur of the for- 
est and the rugged mountains gave. 

In the cities the Catholics assisted at the celebration of the 
divine mysteries in stable-yards, garrets, and such obscure 
places as sheltered them from the pursuit of the magistrates. 
On one occasion, while the congregation (assembled in an old 
building) was kneeling to receive the benediction, the floor 



318 A CENTURY OF GLOOK 

gave way, and all were buried beneath tlie ruin ; many were 
killed, the priest among others ; some were maimed for life, and 
remained to the end of their lives monuments of the cruelty of 
the government. The dead and dying, and the wounded, were 
carried through the streets on carts ; and the sad spectacle at 
last moved the Protestants themselves to sympathy. The govern- 
ment was compelled to give way, and allow the persecuted Catho- 
lics to enjoy without further molestation the private exercise of 
their religion. 

But that this was not a willing concession on the part of the 
reigning power is manifest enough from the steady, unswerving, 
contrary policy pursued until that time. It , was simply forced 
to give way to outraged public opinion, then openly opposed 
throughout Europe to persecution for conscience' sake. 

With religion education was also proscribed. Already, under 
William of Orange, had papist school- masters been forbidden to 
teach, but the penalty of their disobedience to the law did not go 
beyond a fine of a few pounds. So that the Irish youth could 
still, with some precautionary prudence, find teachers of the 
Greek and Latin languages, of mathematics, history, and geogra- 
phy. In Munster particularly schools and academies of literature 
flourished ; the ardor of the people for the acquirement of knowl- 
edge could not be balked by such paltry obstacles as the laws of 
William III. 

But the Irish Parliament under Anne could not rest satisfied 
with such mild measures. By the "Explanatory Act" of 1710, 
the school-master in Ireland was subjected to the same punish- 
ment as the priest whom he accompanied everywhere. Prison, 
transportation, death itself, became the reward of teaching. And 
in proportion as other laws, severer yet, prevented the people 
from sending their children abroad to be educated, and these 
laws were renewed occasionally and made more stringent and 
effective, the result was the total impossibility of Catholic chil- 
dren receiving any education higher than that of the house. 

The final result is known to all. The "hedge-school" was 
established, that being the only way left of imparting elementary 
knowledge ; and it required Irish ingenuity and Irish aptitude 
for shifts to invent such a system, for system it was, and carry 
it through for so long a time. 

But even the last sanctuary of home was yet to be sacrilegi- 
ously invaded ; the most sacred of human rights could not be 
left to the persecuted people, and the strongest bonds of family 
affection were if possible to be broken asunder. What tyranny 
had never yet dared attempt in any age or country was to be- 
come a law in Ircjland ; and that holy feeling by which the mem- 
bers of a family are held together, in obedience to one of the 
most necessary and solemn commandments of God, could not be 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 319 

left nndisturbed in the bosom of an Irisli child. The father's 
rule over his children and the honor and love due by the child 
to its parent, were, in fact, declared by English legislation of no 
value, and fit subjects for cruel interference, introducing irresisti- 
ble temptation. 

Yes, by the laws enacted in the reign of Anne, the son was to 
be set against the father, and this for the sake of religion ! It 
was a part of the Irish statutes, and for a long time it took occa- 
sional effect, that any son of a Catholic who should turn Protes- 
tant at any age, even the tenderest, should alone succeed to the, 
family estate, which from the day of the son's conversion could 
neither be sold nor charged even with a debt of legacy. From 
that same day the son was taken from his father's roof and deliv- 
ered into the custody of some Protestant guardian. Ko tie, how- 
ever sacred, no claim, however dear, was respected by those states- 
men, who at the very time were the loudest to boast of their 
love for freedom, while trampling under foot the most indispen- 
sable rights of l^ature. 

The wickedest ingenuity of man could certainly not go be- 
yond this to debase, degrade, and destroy a nation. After un- 
precedented calamities of former ages, we find millions of men 
reduced by other men, calling themselves Christians, to a condi- 
tion of pagan helots, deprived of all rights and treated more 
barbarously than slaves. And all the while they were allowed, 
induced, encouraged to put an end to their misery by simply say- 
ing one word, taking one oath, " conforming " as the expression 
had it. N"evertheless they steadily refused to speak that word, to 
take that oath, to conform ; that is to say, to abjure their religion. 
A few, weak in faith, or carried away by sudden passion, a burst 
of despair, subscribe to the required oath, assist as demanded at 
the religious services on Sunday, suddenly rise to distinction, are 
sure of preserving their wealth, or even enter into sole possession 
of the family property, to the exclusion of all its other members. 
But such rare examples, instead of rousing the envy of the rest, 
excite only their contempt and execration. To them they are 
henceforth apostates, renegades to their faith, cast out from the 
bosom of the nation ; and their countrymen hug their misery 
rather than exchange it for honors and wealth purchased by 
broken honor, lost faith, and cowardly desertion of the cause for 
which their country was what it was. 

While the cowards were so few, and the brave men so many, 
the latter constituting indeed the whole bulk of the people, they 
were knit together as a band of brethren, never to be estranged 
from each other. If any thing is calculated to form a nation, to 
give it strength, to render it indestructible, imperishable, it 
is imdoubtedly the ordeal through which they passed without 
shrinking, and out of which they came with one mind, one pur- 



320 A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

pose, animated by one liolj feeling, the love of tlieir religion, 
and tlie determination to keep it at all hazard. 

Yes, at any moment throughout this long century, they might 
have changed their condition and come out at once to the enjoy- 
ment of all the rights dear to men, by what means is best ex- 
pressed in the few words of Edmund Burke : 

" Let three millions of people " (the number of Irishmen at 
the time he spoke) " but abandon all that they and their ances- 
tors have been taught to believe sacred, and forswear it publicly 
in terms most degrading, scurrilous, and indecent, for men of in- 
tegrity and virtue, and abuse the whole of their former lives, and 
slander the education they have received, and nothing more is 
required of them. There is no system of folly, or impiety, or 
blasphemy, or atheism, into which they may not throw them- 
selves, and which they may not profess openly and as a system, 
consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a free 
citizen in the happiest constitution in the world." 

Thus does the reason of man commend their constancy ; but 
that constancy required something more than human strength. 
God it was who supported them. He alone could grant power 
of will strong enough to uphold men plunged for so long a time 
in such an abyss of wretchedness. To him could they cry out 
with truth : " It is only owing to Divine mercy that we have not 
perished ; " misericordias Domini, quod non sumus consumpti ! 

But human reason can better comprehend the effect pro- 
duced on a vast multitude of people by oppression so unexam- 
pled in its severity. An immense development of manhood and 
self-dependence, an heroic determination to bear every trial for 
conscience' sake, and a certainty of succeeding, in the long-run, 
in breaking the heavy chain and casting off the intolerable yoke 
— such was the effect. 

It has been asserted by some authors, who have written on 
that terrible eighteenth century in Ireland, that the spirit of the 
people was entirely broken, that there was no energy left among 
them, and that the imposition of burdens heavier still, were such 
a thing possible, could scarcely elicit from them even the sem- 
blance of remonstrance. It was only natural to think so ; but, 
in our opinion, this is only true of the external despondency un- 
der which the people was bowed, but utterly false with respect 
to a lack of mental energy. 

There certainly was no general attempt at insurrection on 
their part ; nor did they take refuge in that last resource of de- 
spair — death after a vain vengeance. If the writers referred to 
would have preferred this last fatal resource of wounded pride, 
they are right in their estimate of the Irish ; but they forget that 
the victims were Christians, and could lend no ear to a ven- 
geance which is futile and a despair which is forbidden. There 



A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 321 

was a better course open before them, and thej followed it : to 
resign themselves to the will of a God they believed in and for 
whom they suffered, and wait patiently for the day of deliver- 
ance. It was sure to come ; and if those then living were 
doomed not to see that happy day, they knew that they would 
leave it as an inheritance to their children. 

Those writers would doubtless have been satisfied of the 
existence of a will among the people, and their conduct would 
have met with greater approval, had the attempts of some indi- 
viduals at private revenge been more general a.nd successful ; if 
the bands of E-apparees, White Boys, and others, had wrought 
more evil upon their oppressors, although they could not prepare 
them to renew the struggle on a large scale with better prospect 
of success. 

But this could not be ; success could never have been reached 
by such a road, and it was useless to attempt it. At that time, 
there existed no possibility of the Irish recovering their rights 
by force. Meanwhile Providence was not forgetful of those who 
were fighting the braver moral battle of suftering and endurance 
for their religion. It was preparing the nation for a future life 
of great purposes, by purifying it in the crucible of afiiiction, and 
preserving the people pure and undebased. 

l^owhere has the period of calamity been so protracted and 
so severe. ' Ireland stands alone in a history of wretchedness of 
seven centuries' duration. She stands alone, particularly inas- 
much as, with her, the affliction has gone on continually increasing 
until quite recently, unrefreshed by periods of relief and glimpses 
of bright hope. The sinking spirits of the people, it is true, have 
been buoyed, up from time to time by sanguine expectations; 
but only to find their expectations crowned with bitter disap- 
pointment and sink deeper again in the sea of their afflictions. 

ISTevertheless, through all that time the Irish continued moral- 
ly strong, and ready at the right moment to leap into the stature 
of giants in strength and resolution. How they did so will be 
seen, and the simplicity of the explanation will be matter for 
surprise. But it is fitting first to set in the strongest light the 
assertion that the Irish were really debased by the calamities of 
that age, that they possessed no self-dependence at a time when 
that was the only thing left to them. 

This view is thus expressed in Godkin's " History of Ireland : " 
" Too well did the penal code accomplish its dreadful work of 
debasement on the intellects, morals, and jDhysical condition of a 
people sinking in degeneracy from age to age, till all manly 
spirit, all virtuous sense of personal independence and respon- 
sibility was nearly extinct, and the very features — vacant, timid, 
cunning, and unreflective — betrayed the crouching slave within." 

And the writer, a well-disposed Protestant, did not see how 
21 



322 A OENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

it could well be otherwise, and took it for granted tliat every one 
would admit the truth of his assertions without the slightest 
hesitation. • 

For he adds, a little farther on : " Having no rights of fran- 
chise — no legal protection of life or property — disqualified to 
handle a gun, even as a common soldier or a game-keeper — 
forbidden to acquire the elements of knowledge at home or 
abroad — ^forbidden even to render to God what conscience 
dictated as his due — ^what could the Irish be but abject serfs ? 
What nature in their circumstances could have been otherwise ? 
Is it not amazing that any social virtue could have survived such 
an ordeal — that any seeds of good, any roots of national great- 
ness, could have outlived such a long tempestuous winter ? " 

Still Mr. Godkin was mistaken ; the Irish had suifered no 
" debasement of the intellects, of the morals, not even of the 
physical condition," notwithstanding the plenitude of causes 
existing to bring such results about. 

Their intellect had been kept in ignorance. Unable to pro- 
cure instruction for their children, except by stealth and in 
opposition to the laws, few of them could acquire even the first 
elements of mental culture. But the intellect of a nation is not 
necessarily debased on that account. As a general rule, it is true 
that ignorance begets mental darkness and error, and will often 
debase the mind and sink the intellectual faculties to the lowest 
human level. But this happens only to people who, having no 
"religious substratum to rest upon, are left at the mercy of error 
and delusions. One great thought, at least, was ever present 
to their minds, and that thought was in itself sufficient to preserve 
their intellect from being degraded ; it was this " Man is nobler 
than the brute and born to a higher destiny." This truth was 
deeply engraved in their minds ; and in defence of it they 
battled, and fought, and bled, all down the painful course of their 
history. 

Had the intellect of the ' nation been really debased, would 
not their religious principles have been the first things to be 
thrown overboard ? Would they not have adopted unhesitatingly 
all the tenets successively proposed to them by the various " re- 
formers " of England ? What is truth, when there ia no mind to 
receive it ? It requires a strong mind indeed to say, " I will 
suifer every thing, death itself, rather than repudiate what I 
know comes from God." It is useless to dwell longer on these 
considerations. The man who sees not in such an heroic deter- 
mination proof of a strong and noble mind may be possessed of 
a great, but to common-sense people it will look like a very 
limited intelligence. ^ 

Mr. Godkin cannot have duly weighed his expressions when 
he spoke of the debasement of morals among the Irish. It is no 



A OENTUEY OF GLOOM. 323 

hyperbole to speak of tlie nation as a martyr ; a martyr in any 
sense of the word : to the Christian, a Christian martyr. And 
yet it is by that fact guilty of immorality, or, as he puts it, debased 
in morals ! The point is not worth arguing. But in contrasting 
the two nations, the nation debased and the nation that wrought 
its debasement, we are irresistibly remincled of the words used 
by Our Lord in reference to John the Baptist, then in prison 
and liable at any moment to be condemned to death : " What 
went ye out in the desert to see ? A man clothed in soft gar- 
ments ? Lo ! they that are clothed in soft garments dwell in the 
houses of kings." 

If we would find a people really debased in morals, we must 
go to those whose material prosperity breeds corruption and 
gives to all the means of satisfying their evil passions. The 
orgies of the Babylonians under their last king, of the eifeminate 
Persians later on, of the Roman patricians during the empire, 
need no more than mention. The cause of the immorality 
prevailing at these several epochs is well known, and has been 
told very plainly by conscientious historians, some of them pagans 
themselves. But, that a people ground down so long under a 
yoke of iron, gasping for very breath, yet refusing to surrender 
its belief and the worship of its God as its countless saints wor- 
shipped him, to follow the wild vagaries of sectarians and fanatics, 
should at the same time be accused of corruption and debasement 
of its morals, is too much for an historian to assert or a reader 
to believe. 

But, beyond all argument, it has been generally conceded, in 
spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been 
preeminently moral and Christian. 'No one has dared accuse 
them of open vice, however they may have been accused of 
folly. Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many 
who, careful to conceal their own failings, are ever ready to 
" cast the first stone " at them. It would be well for them to 
ponder over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the 
w^oman taken in adultery ; when perhaps they may think twice 
before repeating the time-worn accusation. 

Coming to the "people sinking in degeneracy from age to 
age ; " if by this is meant that, for a whole century, many of them 
have suffered the direst want and died of hunger, that scanty 
food has impressed on many the deep traces of physical suffering 
and bodily exhaustion, no one will dispute the fact, while the 
blame of it is thrown where it deserves to be thrown. But it 
will be a source of astonishment to find that, despite of this, the 
race has not degenerated even physically ; that it is still, perhaps, 
the strongest race in existence, and that no other European, no 
Englishman or Teuton, can endure the labor of any ordinary 
Irishman. In the vast territory of the United States, the public 



324 A CENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

works, canals, roads, railways, huge fabrics, immense manufac- 
tories, bear witness to the truth of this statement, and the only 
explanation that can be satisfactorily given for this strange fact 
is, that their morals are pure and they do not transmit to their 
children the seeds of many diseases now universal in a univer- 
sally corrupt society. 

There remains the final accusation of the " very features — 
vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective — ^betraying the crouching 
slave within." 

Granting the truth of this — which we by no means do, every 
school-geograj)hy written by whatever hand attesting the con- 
trary to-day — where would have been the wonder that they, 
subjected so long to an unbending harshness and never-slumber- 
ing tyranny, accustomed to those continual " domiciliary visits " 
so common in Ireland during the whole of last century, dragged 
so often before the courts of " justice," to be there insulted, 
falsely accused, harshly tried and convicted without proof — were 
obliged to be continually on their guard, to observe a deep 
reserve, the very opposite to the promptings of their genial 
nature, to return ambiguous answers, full, by the way, of natural 
wit and marvellous acuteness ? It was the only course left them 
in their forlorn situation. They pitted their native wit against 
a wonderfully devised legislation, and often came off the victors. 
Suppose it were true, was it not natural that, under such a 
system of unrelaxing oppression and hatred toward them, their 
faces should be "vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective, be- 
traying the crouching slave within ? " 

Could they give back a proud answer, when a proud look was 
an accusation of rebellion ? Are prudence, cunning, and just 
reserve, vacancy and want of reflection ? The man who penned 
those words should remember the choice of alternatives ever 
present to the mind of an Irishman, however unjustly suspected 
or accused — the probability of imprisonment or hanging, of 
being sent to the workhouse or transported to the " American 
plantations." 

The Irishman must have changed very materially and very 
rapidly since Mr. Godkin wrote. The features he would stamp 
upon him might be better applied to the Sussex yokel or the 
English country boor of whatever county. The generality of 
travellers strangely disagree with Mr. Godkin. They find the 
Irishman the type of vivacity, good humor, and wit ; and they 
are right. Tor, under the weight of such a load of misery, 
under the ban of so terrible a fate, the moral disposition of the 
Irishman never changed ; his manhood remained intact. To- 
day, the world attests to the same exuberance of spirits, the same 
tenacity of purpose, which were ever his. This indeed is won- 
derful, that this people should have been thus preserved amid so 



A CENTURY OF GLOOM. 325 

many causes for change and deterioration. Who shall explain 
this mystery ? What had they, all through that age of woe, to 
give them strength to support their terrible trials, to preserve to 
thein that tenacity which prevented their breaking down alto- 
gether ? Something there was indeed not left to them, since it 
was forbidden under the severest penalties ; something, never- 
theless, to which they clung, in spite of all prohibitions to the 
contrary. 

It was the Mass-Rook, peculiar to the eighteenth century, 
now known only by tradition, but at that time common through- 
out the island. The principal of those holy places became so 
celebrated at the time that, on every barony map of Ireland, 
numbers of them are to be found marked under the appropriate 
title of " Corrig-an-Affrion " — the mass-rock. 

Whenever, in some lonely spot on the mountain, among the 
crags at its top, or in some secret recess of an unfrequented glen, 
was found a ledge of rock which might serve the purpose of an 
altar, cut out as it were by ITature, immediately the place became 
known, to the surrounding neighborhood, but was kept a pro- 
found secret from all enemies and persecutors. There on the 
morning appointed, often before day, a multitude was to be seen 
kneeling, and a priest standing under the canopy of heaven, 
amid the profound silence of the holy mysteries. Though the 
surface of the whole island was dotted with numerous churches, 
built in days gone by by Catholics, but now profaned, in ruins, 
or devoted to the worship of heresy, not one of them was al- 
lowed to serve for a place where a fraction even of the bulk of 
the population might adore their God according to the rites ap- 
proved of by their conscience. Shut off from these temples so 
long hallowed by sweet remembrance as the spots once occupied 
by the saints and consecrated to the true worship of their God, 
this faithful nation was consecrating the while by its prayers, by 
its blood, and by its tears, other places which in future times 
should be remembered as the only spots left to them for more 
than a century wherein to celebrate the divine rites. 

This was the only badge of nationality they had preserved, 
but it was the most sacred, the surest, and the sweetest. Who 
shall tell of the many prayers that went up thence from devoted 
minds and hearts, to be received by angels and carried before 
the throne of God ? Who shall say that those prayers were not 
hearkened to when to-day we see the posterity of those holy 
worshippers receiving or on the point of receiving the full meas- 
ure of their desires ? 

There, indeed, it was that the nation received its new birth ; 
in sorrow and suffering, as its Saviour was born, but for that 
very reason sacred in the eyes of God and man. Their enemies 
had sworn complete separation from them, eternal animosity 



326 A OENTUEY OF GLOOM. 

against them ; the new nation accepted the challenge, and that 
complete separation decreed bj their enemies was the real means 
of their salvation and of making them a People. 

As has already been observed, the various attempts to make 
Protestants of them, attempts sometimes cunning and crafty, at 
others open and cruel, always persevered in, never lost sight of, 
began to imbue the people with a new feeling of nationality, 
never experienced before, and constantly increasing in intensity. 

This was witnessed under the Tudors. Their infatuation for 
the Stuart dynasty served the same end, and it may be said that, 
from all the evils which that attachment brought upon them, 
burst forth that great recompense of national sentiment which 
almost compensated them for the terrible calamities which fol- 
lowed in its train. It was under Charles I. that the Confedera- 
tion of Kilkenny first gave them a real constitution, better 
adapted for the nation than the old regime of their Ard-Eighs. 
. But it was chiefly under the English Commonwealth, when 
they were so mercilessly crushed down by Cromwell and his 
brutal soldiery, when there seemed no earthly hope left them, 
that the solid union of the old native with the Anglo-Irish fami- 
lies, which had already been attempted — and almost successfully 
by the Confederation of Kilkenny — yet never consummated, 
was finally brought about once for all ; their common misery 
uniting them in the bonds of brotherly afiection, blotting out 
forever their long-standing divisions and antipathies which had 
never been quite laid aside. 

It was thus that the nation was formed and prepared by mar- 
tyrdom for the glorious resurrection, the greater future liept in 
store for it by Providence ; the people all the while remaining 
undebased under their crushing evils. 

Lastly, the intensity of the suftering produced by the penal 
laws, during the eighteenth century, linked the nation in closer 
bonds of union still, and this time gave them a unanimity 
which became invincible. Their final motto was then adopted, 
and will stand forever unchanged. In the clan period it was 
" Our sept and our chieftain ; " under the Tudors, " Our religion 
and our native lords;" imder the Stuarts it suddenly became 
"God and the King;" — it changed once more, never to 
change again : it was embraced in one word, the name of Him 
who had never dei 
side — " OuE God ! 



CHAPTER XIII. 

EESTTEEECTION. DELUSIVE HOPES. 

By delusive hopes are here meant some of the various 
schemes in which Irishmen have indulged and still indulge with 
the view of bettering their country. This chapter will aim at 
showing that, for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction 
of her past is impossible ; parliamentary independence or 
" home rule," insufficient ; physical force and violent revolu- 
tion, in conjunction with European radicals particularly, is as 
unholy as it is impracticable. 

The resurrection of the Irish nation began with the end of 
last century. As, to use their own beautiful expression, '•' 'Tis 
always the darkest the hour before day," so the gloom had 
never settled down so darkly over the land, when light began to 
dawn, and the first symptoms of returning life to flicker over the 
face of the, to all seeming, dead nation. Its coming has been 
best described in the " Hrstory of the Catholic Association " by 
"Wise. On reading his account, it is impossible not to be struck 
with the very small share that men have had in this movement; 
it was purely a natural process directed by a merciful God. As 
with all national processes, it began by an almost imperceptible 
movement among a few disconnected atoms, which, by seeming 
accident approaching and' coming into contact, begin to form 
groups, which gather other groups toward them in ever-in- 
creasing numbers, thus giving shape to an organism which 
defines itself after a time, to be finally developed into a strong 
and healthy being. This process differed essentially from those 
revolutionary uprisings which have since occurred in other na- 
tions, to the total change in the constitution and form of the 
latter, without any corresponding benefit arising from them. 

Before entering upon the full investigation of this uprising, 
it may be well to dispel some false notions too prevalent, even 
in our days, among men who are animated with the very 
best intentions, who wish well to the Irish cause, but who 
seem to fail in grasping the right idea of the question. Re- 
construction, say they, is impossible — at least as for as the 



328 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

past Mstory of tlie comitiy goes. Where are lier leaders, lier 
chieftains, her nobihty ? Feudalism broke the clans, persecution 
put an effectual stop to the labors of genealogists and bards. 
Where, to-day, are the O'lSTeill, the O'Brien, the O'Donnell, and 
the rest ? Until new leaders are found, oifshoots, if possible, of 
the old families, more faithful and trustworthy than those who 
so far have volunteered to guide their countrymen, how is it 
possible to expect a people such as the Irish have always been, to 
assume once more a corporate existence, and enjoy a truly 
national government ? 

I. That the Irish nobility has disappeared forever may be 
granted. In giving our reasons for believing in the impossibility 
of connecting the present with the past through that class, and 
thus restoring a truly national government, and in strengthening 
this opinion by what follows, we shall show at the same time 
that, in that regard, Ireland is on a par with all other national- 
ities, among whom the aristocratic classes have quite lost the 
prestige that once belonged to them, and can no longer be said to 
rule modern nations. 

The question of nobility is certainly an important one for the 
Irish — ^nay, for all peoples. Up to quite recently, profound 
thinkers never imagined it possible for a people to enjoy peace 
and happiness save under the guidance of those then held to be 
natural guides with aristocratic blood in their veins, who were 
destined by God himself to rule the masses. We are far from 
falling in with the fashion, so common nowadays, of deriding 
those ideas. Men like Joseph de Maistre, who was certainly an 
upholder of the theory, and who could not suj)pose a nation to 
exist without a superior class appointed by Providence to guide 
those whose blood was less pure, have a right to be listened to 
with respect, and none of their deliberate opinions should be 
treated with levity. 

And, in truth, no nobility ever existed more worthy of the 
title, as far as the origin of its power went, than the Irish. Its 
last days were spent, like those of true heroes, fighting for their 
country and their God. It is a remarkable fact that they, the 
truest, were the first of the aristocratic classes to fall. After 
them, all the aristocracies of Europe, with the exception perhaps 
of the English, which still exists at least in name, gradually saw 
their j)ower wrested from them, so that, to-day, it may be said 
with truth that the " noble " blood has lost its prerogative of 
rule. 

Various are the theories on these superior classes ; a few 
words on some of them may be as appropriate as interesting. 

Of all those advanced, Yico's are the least defensible, though 
they seem to rest on a deep knowledge of antiquity. No Chris- 
tian can accept his view of a universal savage state of society after 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 329 

the Flood ; and liis explanation of tlie origin of aristocratic races, 
and of the plebeians, their slaves, is purely the work of imagina- 
tion, however well read in classic lore may have been the author 
of " Scienza NxiovaP To suppose with him that the primeval 
"nobles" reached the first stage of civilization by inventing 
language, agriculture, and religion, and by imposing the yoke 
of servitude on the " brutes " who were not yet possessed of 
the first characteristics of humanity, is revolting to reason, and 
contradictory to all sound philosophy and knowledge of history. 
His aristocracy is a brutal institution which he does well to 
doom to extinction as soon as the jplebs is sufficiently instructed 
and powerful enough to seize upon the reins of government, 
before it, in its turn, is brought under by the progressive march 
of monarchy, with which his system culminates. 

The feudal ideas concerning " noble " blood rested on an 
entirely difierent basis. The feudal monarch is but the first of 
the nobles, and the possession of land is the true prerogative and 
charter of nobility. The inferior classes being excluded from 
that privilege, are also excluded from all political rights, and 
are nothing more nor less than the conquered races which were 
first reduced to slavery. Christianity was the only power which 
effected a change, and a deep one, in the relations of these 
two classes to each other; the rigorous application of the sys- 
tem by the l!^orthmen being entirely opposed to the elementary 
teachings of our holy religion. 

From the change thus brought about resulted the Christian 
idea of aristocratic and monarchical government which had the 
support of some gifted writers of the last and present centuries. 
It was in fact a return to the old system realized by Charlemagne 
in the great empire of which he was the founder — a system 
whose glorious march was interrupted by the invasion of feudal- 
ism in its severest form, which, according to what was before 
said, came down from Scandinavia in the time of Charlemagne's 
immediate successors. Under the regime of the noble emperor, 
the Church, the Aristocracy, and the People, formed three 
Estates, each with its due share in the government. This mode 
of administering public afifairs became general in Europe, and 
stood for nearly a thousand years. 

But is it the particular form of government necessary for 
the happiness of a nation, as it was held to be by some powerful 
minds ? If it is, then are we born, indeed, in unhappy times ; 
for the corner-stone of the edifice, the aristocratic idea, has 
crumbled away, and is apparently gone forever. 

Any one, looking at Europe as it stands to-day, must feel 
constrained to admit that its history for the last hundred years 
may be summed up in the one phrase : admission of the middle 
classes of society to the chief seat of government. Russia now 



330 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

makes tlie solitary exception to this rule ; for in England, wliicli 
seems tlie most feudal of all nations, the middle classes have 
attained to a high position, and, through their special represent- 
atives, have often taken the chief lead in public affairs, ever 
since the Eevolution of 1688, a lead which is now imcontested. 
And as individuals of the middle class are often admitted into the 
ranks of the aristocracy, it would indeed be a hard thing to find 
purely "noble " blood in the vast majority of aristocratic families 
now existing in Great Britain, 

The history of the gradual decline of what is called the no- 
bility in the various states of Europe would require volumes. 
In many instances it would certainly be found to have been 
richly merited, in France particularly, perhaps, where the corrup- 
tion of that class was one of the chief causes which led to the 
first French Eevolution. 

But in Ireland the original idea of nobility was different 
from that entertained elsewhere ; the action of the institution on 
the people at large was peculiar in its" character ; and if, in early 
times, those rude chieftains were often guilty of acts of violence 
and outrage against religion and morality, they atoned for this 
by that last long struggle of theirs, so nobly waged in defence 
of both. But the destruction of the order was final and com- 
plete, and seems to have left no hope of resurrection. 

In our first chapter, when treating of the clan system, the 
origin of chieftainship among the Celts was referred back to the 
family : all the chieftains, or nobles, were each the head of a 
sept or tribe, which is the nearest approach to a family; all the 
clansmen were related by blood to the chieftain. The order of 
nobility among the Celts was therefore natural and not artificial ; 
being neither the result of some conventional understanding nor 
of brute force. Nature was with them the parent of nobility 
and chieftainship ; and the ennobling, or raising a person by 
mere human power to the dignity of noble, was unknown to 
them : a state of things peculiar to the race. 

In Yico's system, aristocracy sprang from physical force or 
skill ; consequently, nobility was founded on no natural right, 
although the author does his best to prove the contrary, chiefly 
by ascribing to the aristocratic class the discovery or invention 
of right (jus) which thus becomes a mere derivative of force. 

In feudalism, pure and unmixed, after it had penetrated 
farther south, imder the lead of the Scandinavians, nobility was 
derived from conquest and armed force. It is true that, by this 
system, the viking, monarch, or sovereign lord, was the one 
who distributed the territory, won from conquered nations, 
among his faithful followers, and thus land and its consequence, 
nobility, were apparently the award of merit ; but the merit in 
question being equivalent to success in battle, it again resolved 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 331 

itself into armed force. In fact, tlie power of fendalism proper 
rested in the army ; the chief nobles were duces or comites 
(dnlces or counts), the inferior nobles were egioites (knights) and 
milites (men-at-arms). All power and title began and ended 
with force of arms, which was the only foundation of right : jus 
captioiii^ et 2>osse8sionis — the right of taking and of keeping. 

Eventually feudal ideas underwent considerable change 
among the aristocracy of Christendom, by the gradual spread 
of .Christian manners ; and the first establishment of nobOity by 
Charlemagne, which was anterior to pure feudalism, afterward 
revived, and lasted a thousand years. Then it was conferred by 
the monarch on merit of any kind, and it was understood that 
those whom superior authority had raised to the dignity had 
won their title by their deeds, which were sufficient to prove 
their noble blood, and that they were empowered to transmit 
the title to their posterity. The idea was a grand one, and gave 
proof of its vast political and social usefulness in the .immense 
benefits which it brought upon Europe during so many ages. 
Unfortunately, the inroad of the Scandinavians, following close- 
ly on the death of its great founder, introduced feudalism as bet- 
ter known to us, interfered with the institution which Charle- 
magne had established in such admirable equipoise, and added to 
it many barbarous adjuncts, which for a long time entered into 
the idea of nobility itself. Thus the titles of feudal lords were 
retained — duces, comites, equites, inilites — with all the parapher- 
nalia of brute force which the harsh mind of northern despotism 
had made divine. Thus was the holding of landed property al- 
lowed to the nobles alone ; the great mass of the population be- 
ing composed of men — ascripti glebce — who were incapable from 
their position of rising in the social scale ; so that all were duly 
impressed with the idea that the mass of the people had been 
conquered and reduced, if not to slavery, to what greatly resem- 
bled it — serfdom. From this order of things arose that fruitful 
source of all modern revolutions, the division of Europe into two 
great classes antagonistic to each other and separated by an al- 
most impassable gulf — the lords and the "villeins." 

To be sure, the supreme lord had the power to raise even a 
villein to the rank of noble, after he had proved his superior ele- 
vation of mind by heroic achievements ; but what superhuman 
exertions did not those achievements call for ; what a concourse 
of fortuitous circumstances rarely occurring, so as to render al- 
most illusory the hope of rising held out by the feudal theory ! 
The Church alone opened her highest grades to all indiscrimi- 
nately ; and, in her, true merit was really an assurance of ad- 
vance. 

Further details are not needed. The difference between 
the idea of the nobility entertained in Celtic countries, and 



332 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

that held by the rest of Europe, is abeady in favor of the 
former. 

For this reason the action of the Irish aristocracy on the peo- 
ple at large was happily altogether free from those causes of 
irritation so common in feudal countries. A close intimacy and 
personal devotion naturally existed between the chieftain of a 
clan and his men — an intimacy manifested by the free manners 
of the humblest among them, and that ease of social intercourse 
between all classes of people, which was a matter of so much 
surprise to the Norman barons at their primitive invasion. 

At first sight, the Celtic system appears, in one respect at 
least, inferior to that which prevailed throughout the rest of 
Europe : the simple clansmen could never indulge in the hope 
of attaining to the chieftainship, being naturally excluded from 
that high office. Only the actual members of the chieftain's own 
family could hope to succeed him after his death, by election, 
and take the lead of the sept ; thus nobility was entirely exclu- 
sive, and ]'egulated by the very laws of JSTature. The office was 
really not transferable, and no degree of exertion, of whatever 
nature, could win it for any person born out of the one family. 
But the difference was scarcely one in fact ; and we know how 
illusory often was that ambition which the system of merit in- 
spired in the man born of an infei'ior class in other races than 
the Celtic. The broad assertion, that no man could rise from 
the condition in which he happened to be born, remains true for 
nearly all cases. 

But, on the other hand, there were motives of ambition be- 
sides that of becoming chieftain, or entering on the road thereto, 
by being admitted into the ranks of the nobility, which lay open 
to the Celt ; and if the desire of a mere clansman to become a 
chieftain lay within the bounds of possibility, the social state of 
Celtic countries would have been broken up and become intoler- 
able, and society would have been dissolved into its primitive 
elements. Two considerations of importance. 

The whole of Irish history teaches one lesson, or, rather, 
impresses one fact : that every member of a clan took as much 
pride in the sept to which he belonged, and labored as zealously 
for its head, as he could have done had the advantage turned all 
to himself. The peculiar features engendered by the system 
were such that each man identified himself with the whole tribe, 
and particularly with its leader ; and this is easily understood, 
as we see the same sort of feeling existing to-day among families. 
It is in the very essence of natural ties to merge the individual 
in the community to which he belongs, as in questions which 
affect the whole family to merge self in the whole, to forget one's 
own identity, to be ready for any sacrifice, particularly when the 
sacrifice is called forth in defence of a beloved parent. 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 333 

To judge by the ancient annals of Ireland whieli are acces- 
sible, this was nndonbtedly the sentiment pervading Celtic clans, 
and it is easy to conceive how, nnder snch conditions, ambitions 
thoughts of the chieftainship or nobility could not well enter 
there. Moreover, we repeat, had such ambitious thoughts been 
within the compass of realization, the whole system would have 
been destroyed. 

The greatest source of quarrels, feuds, wars, and general 
calamities among the Irish people, was the insane aspiration 
among the inferior members of a chieftain's family after supreme 
power. The institution of Tanist, or heir-apparent, particularly, 
which M^as general for all offices, from the highest to the lowest, 
was a constant source of trouble and contention to septs which, 
without it, would have remained united and in harmony. Mon- 
talembert has well said that it seems as if an incurable fatality 
accompanied the Irish everywhere, and condemned nearly all 
the highest among them to have their blood shed either by 
others or by their own hand, and that few indeed are those re- 
nowned chieftains and kings who died quietly in their beds. 
Their annals are filled throughout with tales of blood ; and, when 
we know of their strong attachment to religion, of their tender- 
heartedness for women, children, old and feeble men, it is hard 
to conceive how they came to shed blood so often, and show 
themselves proof against the simplest claims of humanity. 

But the difficulty is sufficiently explained by their own annals 
and the state of society under which they lived. The Tanistry 
was the great source of all those evils. The position of a chief- 
tain was so honorable, so influential, and powerful, that all natu- 
ral sentiments, even those of family affection, were often ex- 
tinguished by the insane ambition of attaining to it, in those 
whom l>[ature had set on the road toward it. 

It looks like a contradiction, yet nothing is so well established 
as their deep affection for their near relatives and the fury engen- 
dered against their nearest of kin when allured by the prospect 
of the chieftainship. What the case might have been, had all the 
"inferior clansmen been influenced by the same motive, one shud- 
ders to think. Happily the possibility of such a position was 
denied them, and thus were they spared all the crime and hor- 
rors which it entailed. Let us now turn to the fall of the Irish 
nobility, in order to see how that fall was final and decisive, 
leaving little or no room for the hope of their resurrection. 

The great wars of Henry YIII. and Elizabeth upon the isl- 
and often drove some of the Irish chieftains to quit their coun- 
try for a time ; a thing scarcely ever known before, where the 
Pale was so contracted and the power of the English kings so 
limited. But those first voyages of Irish lords to foreign coun- 
tries had generally no other destination than England itself, 



334 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

wliitlier tliej sometimes repaired to justify themselves in tlie 
presence of the sovereign against the imputations of their ene- 
mies, or to pay court to him for the purpose of obtaining some 
coveted object. Occasionally their children were brought up at 
the English court, either with the view of instilling Protestant- 
ism into their artless minds, or to make them friends of England, 
so that many of them thus became king's or qneen's men. In 
this manner the Irish nobility first came to look out beyond 
their own country. 

When, as events went on, some great family was crushed or 
nearly so, as were the Kildares by Henry Tudor and the G-eral- 
dines by Elizabeth, the outraged nobility began to think of for- 
eign alliances, and cast their eyes abroad over Spain, Belgium, or 
France, above all toward Rome, which was the centre of their 
religion, attachment to which was one of their chief crimes, 
where the Holy Father was ever ready to encourage and receive 
them with open arms, Thus history tells us of the narrow es- 
cape of young Gerald Desmond. 

He was still a child of twelve years, and the sole survivor of 
the historic house of Kildare, when his life was sought after with 
an eagerness which resembled that of Herod, but the devotion 
of his clansmen defeated all attempts at his capture. "Alter- 
nately the guest of his aunts, married to the daughter of the 
chief of Oifaly and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere felt for 
him led to a confederacy between the northern and southern 
chieftains, which had long been felt wanting, and never could be 
accomplished. A loose league was formed, including the O'l^eills 
of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, 
and the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The child, object of so 
much natural and chivalrous affection, was harbored for a time 
in Munster ; then transported, through Connaught, into Donegal ; 
and finally, after four years, in which he engaged more the minds 
of the statesmen than any other individual under the rank of roy- 
alty, he was safely landed in France." — {A. M. 0'' Sullivan.) 

But the intercourse between the Irish nobility and foreign 
powers was chiefly increased during the reign of Elizabeth, 
when by the great league of the Desmond Geraldines in the 
south, which was followed by that of the O'JSTeills and O'Don- 
nells in the north, they entered into open treaty with the Popes 
and the Kings of Spain ; and, when reverses came, no other 
resource was left to the outlawed chieftains than flight to the 
Continent, where they abode till the storm blew over, sometimes' 
for the remainder of their lives. 

James Fitzmaurice stayed a long time in Italy, where, on 
hearing of the imprisonment of his cousins, the Desmonds, he 
planned the first great league in defence of religion, no longer 
for the purpose only of righting family wrongs, but of waging a 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 335 

holy war wliicli might draw the cooperation of all the Catholic 
powers. 

These few details are here furnished, because they mark a 
new starting-point in the history of the race, when the nobility 
of the land first went abroad to live with a view of finding allies 
for the Irish cause ; while the Irish at home looked anxiously to 
their chieftains abroad to return to them with the promised suc- 
cor. 

A few words on the policy exercised toward the Irish nobili- 
ty by Henry YIII., Elizabeth, and James I., at the beginning of 
his reign, will give us a sufficiently clear insight into the means 
adopted for the gradual attack upon them, which resulted first 
in their partial subjugation, finally in their total destruction. 
Those monarchs thought that, to reduce Ireland to an English 
colony, all they had to do was to destroy the chieftains, and the 
subjugation of the country was complete. They were strength- 
ened In this opinion by the outbreak of Protestantism, which 
had deprived the lower classes not only of their material comfort 
and religious consolations, but of all the immunities and liberties 
which the middle ages had left to them. While the mass of the 
nation was not only denied all political influence, but even all 
right to any consideration whatsoever on the part of the state, 
when the highest nobles were cowering at the feet of royalty, 
utterly at the mercy of the Tudor despots, how could the plebs 
of England and Ireland dare show its front even to testify to mere 
existence ? 

The English monarchs were aware that the spirit of the Irish 
nobles was not broken like that of their English vassals ; and 
they resolved on bringing the proud lords of the Pale and the 
chieftains of the old race to a like submission with their own no- 
bles. But of the common clansmen they made no more account 
than of the English rabble, and herein lay their great mistake. 
Subsequent history proved that the national leaders of the Irish 
race might be utterly annihilated, and yet the Irish question 
remain as great a difiiculty as ever, owning to the stubborn, 
though sometimes passive resistance of the peasantry. But at 
that time such a thing was not contemplated. 

All the cunning of diplomacy, all the artifice of the law, 
finally all the material resources of England, were called in, one 
after the other, or together, to achieve that great object of the 
policy of the Tudors and of the first Stuart. It is not necessary 
to go over what every person conversant with the history of the 
time knows by heart ; it is only proper to indicate, as briefly 
as possible, the gradual results of that crafty and stern policy. 

The Geraldine war ended with the total destruction of the 
Catholic Anglo-Irish nobles of the south, whose place was filled 
by the younger sons of Protestant nobles from England. "With 



336 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

the Geraldines, or shortly after tliem, fell the O'Snllivans of 
Beare, the McGeohegans, the O'Driscolls, and O'Connors of 
Kerry, whom Spain and Portugal received. 

Then the whole efforts of Elizabeth were turned to the de- 
struction of the native chieftains of the north. She failed ; and 
the war resulted in a peace which left their lands and the open 
pi'actice of their religion to the Ulster chiefs. 

But James I., though he seemed willing to abide by the artic- 
cles of the treaty, was driven by hard pressure to employ deceit, 
fraud, intimidation, and force, to bring the northern nobility into 
his power, and "the flight of the earls" was the consequence. 

From this date the " Irish exiles " began in good earnest, 
originally consisting, for the most part, of families belonging to 
the first blood of the land, with minor chiefs and captains in 
their retinue. Many letters written at the time, which have 
been preserved, as well as reports of spies and informers, dis- 
patched to the court of England from Spain, Portugal, Belgium, 
France, and Italy, give us an insight into the life led by those 
noblemen in foreign countries. They were sometimes supported 
by the sovereigns who received them ; but at others neglected 
and reduced to shifts for a living. 

The " flight " itself and all its details are given by the Kev. 
C. P. Meehan. The entire number of souls on board the small 
vessel which bore them away was, according to Teigue O'Keenan, 
Ollamh of Maguire, " ninety-nine, having little sea-store, and 
being otherwise miserably accommodated." This was indeed the 
first emigration of the Irish nobles and gentry, which was to be 
followed by many another, to their final extinction. 

Sir John Davies took an English view of the subject when 
he wrote, about that time, to Lord Salisbury : " We are glad to 
see the day wherein the countenance and majesty of the law and 
civil government hath banished Tyrone out of Ireland, which 
the best army in Europe, and the expense of two million pounds 
sterling, did not bring to pass. And we hope his Majesty's 
government will work a greater miracle in this kingdom than 
ever St. Patrick did ; for St. Patrick did only banish the poison- 
ous worms, but suffered the men full of poison to inhabit the 
land still ; but his Majesty's blessed genius will banish all those 
generations of vipers out of it, and make it, ere it be long, a right 
fortunate island." 

Davies's prophecy ought to have been accomplished long ago, 
for it is long since all the Irish nobility, " those generations of 
vipers," has been destroyed; yet the poor island is still far from 
being " right fortunate." 

The chief means employed at the time to encompass the 
destruction of the nobles was the infamous revelations of spies 
and informers. The existence of these agents has long been 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 337 

known to all ; but tlie extent of their workings was not suspected 
even until tlie state papers and the correspondence of political 
men, and holders of offices at the time, came to be examined by 
writers desirous of investio-atino; the whole truth. 

It was then found that every man in the English Govern- 
ment, beginning from the highest, the king's ministers, through 
the Lords-Lieutenants and Chief-Justices of Ireland, down to the 
lowest officials, one and all kept in their pay men of all ranks of 
life, who, at the bidding of their employers, were ready to cir- 
cumvent the victims of an odious policy, and under the guise of 
friendship, interest, common acquaintance, to discover, and even, 
if needed, to invent facts and circumstances which might be 
turned against them, or against any other persons obnoxious to 
England, with the view of destroying them. So that, to England 
in Europe, and to Elizabeth in England, belongs the dubious 
honor of having invented that great agent of modern govern- 
ments — the secret police. 

But the operations of those informers were not confined to 
England and Ireland alone, although those two kingdoms may 
be said to have literally swarmed with them ; all foreign countries 
were ma^ie the scenes of their infamous machinations, wherever 
in fact the Irish nobles or English Catholics fled for refoge from 
persecution. At the courts of Spain and Rome they were to be 
found ; in Brussels and Louvain, in Paris and Rheims, as well 
as in the by-lanes of London and the lowest quarters of Dublin. 
The ecclesiastical establishments particularly, which were founded 
by the Irish Catholics for the education of their priesthood, were 
infested with them : they found means to penetrate into their 
most secluded recesses, and sometimes the vilest and most 
shameful hypocrisy was resorted to in order to gain admittance 
into those holy cloisters devoted to science and virtue. 

All the great houses and hotels in foreign countries, where 
the banished nobility of Ireland passed the tedious hours, 
months, and years, of their exile, were the places easiest of access 
to those base tools of the English Government. 

On the reports furnished by these men the British policy 
was based, and the nobility and gentry still left in the island fell 
into the meshes so cautiously spread around them. How many 
of their number were cast into the Tower of London or the 
Castle of Dublin, on the mere word of these pests of society ! 
How many, suddenly warned of the treachery intended, had to 
fly in haste lest they should fall into the hands of their enemies ! 
We know that the first " flight of the earls " was brought about 
by such means as these, but our readers would be mistaken in 
imagining that that was an exceptional case, scarcely ever re- 
peated. It was in reality the ordinary way of getting rid of 
this hated race of Irishmen. 
22 



338 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

The great misfortune was tliat, even among the Irish them- 
selves, nay, among friars and priests belonging to the race, the 
English Government sometimes, though Heaven be thanked ! 
rarely, found ready tools and most useful informers. Mean and 
sordid souls are to be found everywhere ; our Lord himself was 
betrayed by an apostle, while giving him the kiss of peace ; but 
among the Irish people this class was confined to a few needy 
adventurers, sometimes to men who, from some personal griev- 
ance, real or imaginary, were blinded by the spirit of revenge to 
deliver those whose destruction they thirsted for into the hands 
of their common enemies, to their own eternal shame and per- 
dition. The common people were too noble-hearted ever to 
join in such infamy, and to those who would have tempted them 
with gold to betray the men concealed by them, the response 
was ever ready : " The King of England is not rich enough to 
buy me ! " 

Thus, piecemeal, as it were, during the reign of Elizabeth and 
James I., and a part, at least, of that of Charles I., numbers of 
the Irish nobles were imprisoned or slain at home, or compelled 
to go into exile. 

ISTor, when James I., going lower in the social scale, began to 
dispossess the ordinary people, the clansmen, the tenants of 
Ulster, in order to make room for his Scotch Presbyterians, was 
the war on the nobility discontinued on that account. The most 
prominent and, in its results, universal feature of his reign, was 
the breaking up of the clans all over the island, whereby he 
effected a complete change in the social state of the country. 
But the most efficacious means of bringing that result about was 
the total destruction of the nobility and gentry. The crafty 
monarch knew that so long as the Irish could see and converse 
with their natural chieftains and lords, so long would it be im- 
possible to extinguish or abate, in the slightest degree, the clan- 
spirit. It was only when the key-stone which held their social 
edifice together — the head of the sept — had disappeared, that the 
whole fabric would tumble into ruins. 

After a long trial of this policy of treachery and craft, came 
Cromwell to complete the work with violence and brutal force. 
There still remained in the island a great number of noble 
families, and the ollamhs and genealogists kept clear the rolls 
of the respective pedigrees. There is no doubt, at the time 
of Cromwell's war of extermination, even when the English 
Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement, that all the Irish 
septs still knew where to find their lawful natural chiefs, who, if 
no longer on the island, were at the head of some regiment in 
Flanders, France, Austria, or Spain. But, as time went on, the 
Irish brigades naturally came to identify themselves more and 
more with the countries into whose service they had passed, and 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 339 

where tliey liad taken up their permanent abode ; while in the 
island itself, force came to degrade what was left of the nobles, 
and to annihilate forever the national state institutions pre- 
served by the genealogists and bards. 

One of the features which most forcibly strikes the reader of 
the history of those times is, what took place all over the island 
when the English Parliament issued that celebrated proclama- 
tion in which it was declared that " it was not their intention to 
extirpate this whole nation." — {October 11, 1652.) 

By that time the chief officers of Cromwell's army had al- 
ready taken possession of a great number of the castles and 
estates of the nobility who had not left the country. The rest 
had fallen into the hands of the adventurers of 1641, who had 
advanced money for the purpose of raising a private army to 
conquer lands for themselves ; Avhile the body of Cromwell's 
troops looked on, awaiting the small pittance of a few hundred 
acres, which was to be their share of the spoil. Here is the 
strange and awe-inspiring picture of the conquered island in the 
seventeenth century : 

The nobles, who had survived the fighting and defeat, were 
allowed to remain a short time until their transportation to Con- 
naught. But, driven away from their mansions, where the new 
" landlords " — the word then came into use for the first time — 
occupied what had been their apartments, they had to live in 
some ruinous out-buildings, and to till with their own hands a 
few roods of land for the support of their perishing families. A 
few garans (dray-horses), and a few cows and sheep, were the 
only aid in labor and production left to them. They were al- 
lowed, by suflierance, to raise some small crops of grain and roots, 
but all their time had to be occupied in purely manual labor. 

Such is the image which fixes itself indelibly on the memory 
of any one who reads attentively the common occurrences of 
those days. . It was a picture presented in every province of the 
island ; in the most distant mountain-fastnesses as well as in the 
still smiling plains of the lowlands. 

The nobles were, as a class, utterly destroyed ; few of them 
fell to the inferior rank of yeomen ; while the mass of the people 
was at once plunged to the dead level of common peasants and 
laborers. If some of the former class still retained a few faithful 
servants, their help was required for the drudgery about the 
farm or the miserable dwelling. J^one of them could be spared 
to keep up " the glory of the house." Would it not have been 
bitter irony to talk to this remnant of pedigree and their long 
line of ancestors ? And would their enemies, who were now 
their masters, have countenanced the proscribed offices of files 
and shanachies, when laws against them specially had been so 
long enacted if not enforced ? ISTow was the exact time for the 



34:0 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

rigid execution of those laws so evidently designed for tlie trans- 
formation of the freeborn natives into feudal serfs. 

Hence, when the bitter day at last came, which was to de- 
prive them of even the sight of the hereditary territory of the 
family, which was to transplant them to Connaught — among 
countrymen, indeed, but none the less strangers to them, whose 
presence could not fail to be unwelcome, and bring disturbance, 
confusion, and disorder — how, in such a case, could they hope to 
retain or revive their prestige as the old lords of the country ? 
It is said that, for this, many of the Munster chieftains preferred 
to go into exile to Spain, or even to the islands of America, 
rather than take up their abode in Connaught, where they were 
sure to find bitter enemies in the old inhabitants of that desolate 
province. 

This state of things knew no change, except with a very few 
of the Anglo-Irish, when Charles II. came to the throne, after 
the death of the Protector. He was in truth merely the executor 
of the great Act of Settlement, and carried into effect what had 
been enacted by the Parliament which had brought his father to 
the block, and driven himself into exile. 

He only restored their estates to a few families of " innocent 
papists." Such was the phrase applied to them in derision, 
doubtless. The generality of the old families continued to sink 
deeper and deeper in degradation, and the forgetfulness of all 
they had once been. 

It took the 'greater part of a century, from 1607 to 1689, to 
effect the almost total disappearance of the Irish nobility. As 
Colonel Myles Byrne, in his "' Irish at Home and Abroad," says : 
" Few facts in history are more surprising than the rapidity and 
completeness of the fall of the Irish families stricken down by 
the penal laws. Reduced to beggary at once, and with habits 
acquired in affluence, surrounded only by contemporaries simi- 
larly crushed, or by the despoilers revelling and rioting in pos- 
session of their forfeited lands, friendless and unpitied, regarded 
as ' suspects ' from the reasons for discontent so abundantly fur- 
nished them, they seemed struck with stupor, and utterly inca- 
pable of any effort to rise out of the abyss into which they had 
been precipitated. Dispirited, heart-broken, unmanned, they 
suffered the little personal property left them to melt away ; 
and, on its exhaustion, were compelled to resort to the most hu- 
miliating means to prolong existence, and to accept for their 
helpless offspring the humblest condition which promised them 
a maintenance. A ' trade ' was the general resort sought for the 
son of the chief of a clan, landholder, or gentleman. 

" This gave rise to Swift's observation to Pope : ' If you 
would seek the gentry of Ireland, you must look for them on the 
coal-quay or in the liberty.' 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 341 

" Thus, in my youtli, ' the Devoy,' the head of one of the 
most powerful and distmgiiished of oiir septs, was a blacksmith. 
I have often seen a mechanic, named James Dnngan, who was 
said to be a descendant of James Dungan, Earl of Limerick ; and 
' the Chevers ' (Lord Mount Leinster) was the clerk of Mrs. 
Byrnes, who carried on the business of a rope-maker. 

" Maddened and embittered by humiliation and suffering, re- 
nouncing all hope of recovering their stolen lands, those victims 
of ' bills of discovery,' or of confiscation, burned or destroyed, or 
threw aside, as worse than useless, the records of their former 
possessions, the proofs of their former respectability, and seemed, 
in fact, desirous to efface all evidence of it. I know one case in 
which the title-deeds of an estate were searched for an important 
occasion, and in which it appeared that they had been given to 
tailors to cut into strips or measures for purposes of their trade. 

" A claim was set up to a dormant peerage, and a relation of 
mine having been applied to for information in support of it, 
he said : ' You are positively in remainder ; but you are in the 
condition of the descendants of many Irish families, whose great 
difficulty is to prove who was their grandfather.' " 

The reader is naturally struck, when the sudden appearance 
of James 11. on the island presents to his eyes another Irish 
army, and a new Irish nation, fighting again for God and the 
king, but with few of the old names among those who then ap- 
peared on the scene. The leaders throughout the three years' 
struggle, which decided the ultimate fate of the country, for the 
most part have names unknown to Ireland, and unassociated 
with its former history, so completely had the aristocracy of the 
island perished and disappeared. 

It may be well imagined, then, that, after the passage of another 
century of woe such as was described in the last chapter, it would 
be impossible to reconstruct the genealogies of the old families 
who might be entitled to lead the rising generation. Some few 
names are still advanced as entitled to the hereditary honors of 
once noble families, and thus we still hear of pretensions to title 
of " the O'Brien," " the O'Donaghue," and a few others. That 
such pretensions are acknowledged by the generality of the na- 
tion, it would be questionable to assert. 

To think, then, of reconstructing the Irish nation out of its 
former elements, as they once existed, would be an idle dream. 
Those elements are dissolved and forever destroyed, and all that 
the nation can do with respect to its past is to preserve in pious 
remembrance the former race of men who once shed down such 
a glory over Irish annals. It was a happy and patriotic thought 
of the antiquarian societies of the island to investigate the old 
national records ; to illustrate, explain, and bring them before the 
public in a language intelligible to the present generation. It is 



342 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

doubtful if in any other country tlie aristocracy fell with a hero- 
ism and glory so pure and unalloyed. Among all modern nations, 
as was said previously, the old class of noblemen has either passed 
out of sight, or is fast disappearing from living history. Ireland, 
then, does not stand alone in that respect. She was the first to 
lose her nobility, and she lost it more utterly than any other na- 
tion. But in the variety of movements, complications, revolu- 
tions, whicli now go to form the daily current of events in Eu- 
rope, where do we find the nobles regarded as a power, as an ele- 
ment calculated to restore or even to preserve. The " noblemen " 
are well enough satisfied nowadays, if they are not persecuted, 
proscribed, or destroyed ; if they are enabled to take their stand 
amid the crowd of men of inferior rank and share in the afiairs 
of their country,; content to see their names once so exclusively 
glorious, set on a par with those of plebeians, to lead the mod- 
ernized peoples into the new paths whither they are rapidly drift- 
ing. Nay, so low have the mighty fallen, that even dethroned 
kings and princes sometimes ask to be admitted as simple citi- 
zens in the countries which they or their ancestors once 
ruled. 

Here the thought will naturally occur : If the phenomenon is 
universal with respect to the position allotted now to men of 
" noble blood" — since it is evident that for those nations which 
feel no veneration for it a future history is designed, and that 
future is to be utterly independent of such an idea — then Ireland 
is no worse off than any other country in that regard, nay, the 
veneration for noble blood perhaps exists, in its right senee, now 
in her bosom alone, and, though no longer available for any pur- 
pose, is still an element of conservatism worthy of preservation 
and far from despicable. 

Therefore, when we number among false hopes the one en- 
tertained by a few Irishmen whose thoughts still cling fondly to 
the past, and who would fain reconstruct it, it is not with the in- 
tention of treating those aspirations slightingly, which we ought 
to honor and would share, were there only the faintest possibility 
of calling again to life what w^e cannot but consider passed away 
forever, 

II. Let us move on to the consideration of our second delusive 
hope, one of a much deeper import, which to-day of all others 
occupies public attention — a separate Irish Parliament and 
home-rule government. 

The desire for a separate Irish Parliament is certainly a na- 
tional aspiration, it may even be called a right ; for the people of 
the island can justly complain of being at the mercy of a rival 
nation, of which they are supposed to form a part, and are con- 
sequently heavily taxed for the support of it without any ade- 
quate return. The day may not be far distajit when this wish of 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 343 

theirs will have to be compliM with, as were so many other 
rights once as strenuously denied. 

ISTevertheless it is our opinion, and we say it advisedly, there 
is no reason for believing that this would prove a universal pan- 
acea for Ireland's woes, sure to bring health, happiness, and 
prosperity to the nation, uniting in itself all blessings, all future 
success, all germs of greatness ; nor is there reason to believe 
that with it the resurrection of the nation is assured, as without 
it, it would remain dead. 

To speak still more clearly — the representation of a people 
by its deputies being according to modern ideas an element of 
free constitution for all nations, and Ireland having for so long a 
time enjoyed a privilege very similar to it under her own nation- 
al monarchs, our object cannot be understood to depreciate a 
political institution which seems to have become a necessity 
of the times, owing to the eager aspiration of all minds and 
hearts toward it. But we think it a delusion to imagine that, 
by its possession, national happiness is necessarily and fully 
secured. 

Whatever may be the general experience of parliamentary 
rule, its record for Ireland is a sad one. The old Feis of the na- 
tion are not here alluded to ; they had very little in common 
with modern Parliaments, being merely assemblies of the chief 
heads of clans, to which were added in Christian times the prel- 
ates of the Churcli. l^either is the " General Assembly," which 
was intrusted with legislative and executive powers by the Con- 
federation of Kilkenny, alluded to ; this could not be reproduced 
to-day exactly as it then existed. 

The Parliament here meant is such as presents itself at once 
to the mind of a man of the nineteenth century, with ' its mem- 
bers of both Houses elected by the people, as in America, or those 
of the Upper House in the nomination of the crown ; its oppos- 
ing parties often degenerating into mere factions ; its views lim- 
ited to material progress, and its aims and aspirations altogether 
worldly ; deeply imbued with the modern ideas of liberalism, 
yet knowing very little, if any thing, of true liberty ; often fol- 
lowing the lead of a few talented members, whose real merits 
are seldom an index of conscience and sense of right. 

Such a liberal institution as this, which, if proposed to-day 
for Ireland by the English Government, would be hailed with 
unbounded joy by all ranks of people in that country, would 
nevertheless be no sure harbinger of happiness to the nation, 
and, to repeat what was said above, the record of such an insti- 
tution in Ireland is a sad one. 

There is no need of entering upon a history of Irish Parlia- 
ments. If an impartial and fair-minded author were to take up 
such a work, it might serve to open the eyes of many, and show 



344: DELUSIVE PIOPES. 

them that it is after all better to *rely on Divine Providence than 
on such an aid to national prosperity. 

Dr. Madden, in his " Connection of Ireland with England," 
conclusively shows that the right of a free and independent Par- 
liament similar to that of England was granted to Ireland by 
King John at the very beginning of the " Conquest." Such a 
Parliament was granted to the handful of Anglo-l:^ormans, who 
were already busy in building their castles for the purpose of re- 
ducing the whole mass of the clans to feudal slavery after having 
deprived them of all their free national assemblies and customs. 
For nearly four hundred years the Irish Parliaments, when not 
completely subjected to English control, as they finally were by 
" Poyning's Act," were mere legislative machines devised for the 
purpose of subduing, cowing, and finally rooting out every thing 
Irish in the land. The language of Sir John Davies was very 
clear on this subject. 

This being such a well-known fact to-day, it seems strange 
that a writer who is so well informed, so acute and discerning, 
and so thoroughly Catholic, as Dr. Madden undoubtedly is, 
should attach such great importance to the institution of Parlia- 
ment as first granted by the English monarchs. They had in 
their eye only the small English colony settled on the island, 
with all their feudal customs, and no thought of granting liberty 
to the mass of the nation. The case of Molyneux, which is so 
often quoted and praised by Irish writers, should be set aside 
and forgotten by any man animated by a true love for Irish 
prosperity. It was merely a revival of the old parties of Eng- 
lish by blood and English by birth, without a single thought of 
the rights of Irishmen. It was a case of siding with one Eng- 
lish party against another, both aiming at making Ireland a col- 
ony of England, the while the unfortunate country was crushed 
between them, certain in either case to be the victim. The na- 
tive race had nothing to say or do in the matter, beyond assist- 
ing at the spectacle of their enemies wran,gling among them- 
selves. 

The same remarks will apply to the pamphlets of Dr. Lucas, 
which created so much interest at the time, and which Dr. Mad- 
den quotes at such length. Lucas, it will be remeuibered, was 
a violent anti-Catholic, and consequently anti-Irish partisan. 

Yet the Catholic Association made all the use they could of 
the arguments of Molyneux and Lucas, because these possessed 
some vestige of the national spirit, inasmuch as they spoke for 
Ireland, whose very name was hated by the opposite party ; and 
at that time the Association was perfectly right : but matters 
have altered since then. 

It is certainly strange that, when serious attempts were made 
by Henry YIll. to introduce Protestantism into Ireland, not 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 345 

only were Anglo-Irish Catholics summoned to Parliament, but 
even native chieftains also, some of whom spoke nothing but 
Irish, so that their speeches required translating. 

But, as was previously shown, this was nothing more nor 
less than a crafty device to make genuine Irishmen unconsciously 
confirm, by what was called their vote, former decrees in which 
the Act of Supremacy had been passed ; to make it appear that 
they had abjured their religion, and were now good Protestants ; 
and, worse still, to set in the statute-book, as acknowledged by all, 
the law of spiritual supremacy vested in the king, of abjuration 
of papal authority, of submission to all decrees passed in England 
with the purpose of effecting an entire change in the religion of 
the nation. 

To such vile uses was the machinery of Parliament reduced. 
Thenceforth it became an engine for the issuing of decrees of 
persecution. Catholic members occasionally appeared in it when 
a lull in the execution of the laws occurred, and they could take 
their seats without being guilty of apostasy. But, by making 
close boroughs of his Protestant colonies, James I. secured, once 
for all, the majority of representatives on the side of the Protes- 
tants, and, as a natural consequence, nothing more grinding, 
sharp, piercing, and strong, could be imagined than this engine 
of law called the Irish Parliament, as it existed under the 
Stuarts. "Nothing" would be incorrect : there was something 
worse ; it came in with the Bevolution of 1688, and its results 
have been witnessed in a previous chapter. 

Owing to the various oaths imposed upon members in the 
time of William of Orange, no Catholic could any longer sit in 
the Irish Parliament without abjuring his faith. And, thence- 
forth, the state institution sitting in Dublin became more than 
ever a persecuting and debasing power, intent only on making, 
altering, improving, and enforcing laws designed for the com- 
plete degradation of the people. 

There came, however, a period of eighteen years, called '•' the 
Rise of the Irish ISTation " by Sir Jonah Barrington. It would 
be a pleasure to set this down as a real exception to the whole 
previous or later history of Ireland ; but such pleasure cannot be 
indulged in. 

At the period referred to France had embraced the cause of 
the l^orth American colonies of Great Britain, and the English 
vessels were not the only ones upon the seas. Large Erench 
, fleets were conveying troops to their new allies, and in 1779 the 
English Government sent warning to Ireland that American or 
Erench privateers were to be expected on the Irish coast, and no 
troops could be dispatched for the protection of the island. 
Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman 
entitled to bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised 



346 DELUSIVE. HOPES. 

with the ostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but 
really intended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's 
Act from England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin real 
independence of English dictation. 

The result is well known. One hundred thousand Irishmen 
were soon under arms, who not only took the field as soldiers, 
and formed themselves into regiments of infantry, troops of 
horse, and artillery, but, strange to say, as citizens, sent dele- 
gates to conventions, and demanded with a loud voice that Eng- 
land should not only grant free trade to the sister isle, but like- 
wise invest the Irish Parliament with independent powers. 

This political open-air contest lasted two years, and, on the 
receipt of the news that the British army had capitulated at 
Torktown, and that the American "War had come to a successful 
termination on the side of the colonists, the Ulster volunteers 
decided to hold a national convention of delegates from every 
city in the province. On Friday, February 15, 1782, the meet- 
ing took place at Dungannon, County Tyrone, and there the 
delegates swore allegiance to a new and as yet unwritten charter, 
refusing to acknowledge " the claim of any body of men, other 
than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to 
bind this kingdom. " 

The same resolution was adopted in successive meetings of 
volunteer delegates, municipal corporations, and citizens gen- 
erally, all over the island. 

The English Grovernment could not resist the pressure. After 
some attempt at temporizing and delaying the concession, on 
April 15, 1782, by the firmness of Grattan and his supporters 
in the Dublin House of Commons, the great measure was final- 
ly carried unanimously : 

" That the kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom, with a 
Parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof ; that there is 
no body of men competent to make laws to bind the nation, but 
the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, nor any Parliament 
which has any authority or power of any sort whatever in this 
country, save only the Parliament of Ireland ; that we humbly 
conceive that in this right the very essence of our liberty exists, 
a right which we, on the part of all the people of Ireland, do claim 
as their birthright, and which we cannot yield but with our 
lives." The italics are our own. 

" The news," says Sir Jonah Barrington, " soon spread 
through the nation ; every city, town, or village, in Ireland 
blazed with the emblems of exultation, and resounded with the 
shouts of triumph." 

Within a month the whole had been accepted by the new 
British administration. " The visionary and impracticable idea 
liad become an accomplished fact ; the splendid phantom had 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 347 

become a glorious reality ; the lieptarchy — the old Irish consti- 
tution — ^had not been restored ; yet Ireland had won complete 
legislative independence." 

Thus does the kind-hearted author of the " Eise and Fall of 
the Irish ISTation " commemorate the great event. It is a pity 
that it so soon ended, as it deserved to end, in smoke ; for the 
" unanimous vote " of the Dublin House of Commons was not 
sincere, but intended to exclude from the benefit of the newly- 
acquired liberty the great mass of the people ; that is, all Catho- 
lics, without exception. 

Already, during the volunteer excitement. Catholics had 
looked on at the movement with pleasure and hope that, at 
least, some relaxation of the barbarous code enacted against 
them might ensue. Unable to take an active part in the move- 
ment, the laws not allowing them to bear arms and enlist, they 
willingly brought such muskets as they possessed to give to their 
Protestant neighbors. When the final burst of enthusiasm came 
at the news that a free and independant Parliament was to meet 
at Dublin, surely they were justified in expecting that, at last, 
their natural and civil rights might be restored them in an age 
so enlightened. They had heard too of the success of the 
American colonies in winning those rights for all in their happy 
country, beyond the Atlantic ; and we may be sure that not a 
few of them had heard how, at the conclusion of the War of 
Independence, the chief officers of the American army had gone 
in state with their French allies to the Catholic Church in 
Philadelphia, there to join in thanksgiving to the Almighty, 
before a Catholic altar. Moreover, they had Grattan and many 
of the volunteers on their side. 

The all-comprehensive phrase, too, had been inserted in the 
resolution so unanimously carried, and made law by the British 
Government : " We humbly conceive that, in this right, the very 
essence of our liberty consists, a right which we, on the part of 
all the people of Ireland, do claim as their birthright, and which 
we cannot yield but with oiir lives." 

Was it possible for the originators and successful promoters 
of this great change in the government of the nation to interpret 
such a phrase in a restricted sence ? Did not the Irish Catholics, 
the great bulk of the people, form a part, at least, of " all in 
Ireland ? " One would imagine so \ yet what followed soon after 
showed the preposterousness of such an idea. 

The new Parliament met j several measures favorable to the 
trade and manufactures of the island had been carried ; but it 
was soon found that the electoral law, as it stood, failed to cor- 
respond with the altered circumstances of the time. The legis- 
lative body was returned by an antiquated electoral system 
which could not be said to represent the nation. Boroughs and 



348 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

seats were o|)enly and literally owned by particular families or 
private persons ; the voting constituency sometimes not number- 
ing more than a dozen. As a matter of fact, less than one hun- 
dred persons owned seats or boroughs capable of constituting a 
majority in the Commons ! 

As everywhere else in revolutionary times, the question of 
parliamentary reform was not debated in the Parliament only ; 
every man in the nation, each in his own sphere, took part in 
the stormy contest which began to rage all over the island. The 
volunteers were still in their glory. Flushed with victory, they 
did not cease from their political agitations. In September, 
1783, they met once more in convention at Dungannon, the 
specific object of which, Dr. Madden tells us, was parliamentary 
reform, and they then determined " to hold another grand na- 
tional convention of volunteer delegates in Dublin, in the month 
of November following."' 

In that extraordinary assembly, the question of the rights of 
Catholics was naturally brought up, and, to his honor be it said, 
the Protestant Bishop of Derry proposed to extend the elective 
franchise to them. 

That some fanatics would oppose this motion was only to be 
expected ; and it would have caused no surprise to find the 
opposition confined to a number of men of inferior station, still 
deeply imbued with narrow Protestant ideas. But when the 
leaders of the movement for national independence, Lord Charle- 
mont and Mr. Flood, appeared in the ranks of the determined 
opponents of the proposition, it was cause for wonder indeed. 
It was chiefly owing to the exertions and influence of Lord 
Charlemont that the efforts of the revolution had been finally 
turned to the side of freedom ; while Flood was a greater nation- 
alist than Grattan himself, whose eloquence was so memorable 
in the last momentous debates of the Irish House of Commons. 
Flood carried his patriotism so far as to suspect the British Gov- 
ernment of not being sincere in its concessions, when Grattan 
thought that " nothing dishonorable and disgraceful ought to be 
supposed in motives until facts render them suspicious," 

Nevertheless, it was Charlemont and Flood who stood firm 
for the exclusion of Catholics from the franchise demanded for 
them by a Protestant bishop ; and Flood's plan was the one 
finally adopted. 

In order to make a stronger impression on the public mind, 
a number of delegates, who were also members of Parliament, 
proceeded, on November 29th, directly from the convention to 
the House of Commons, some of them dressed in their volunteer 
uniforms, for the purpose of supporting the plan of Mr. Flood 
to exclude the Catholics from the franchise. 

In the midst of the tumult, the bill of reform failed, seventy- 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 349 

seven voting for, and one linndred and fifty against it. There 
was therefore no change in the Parhament, and Catholics re- 
mained in their old position, in consequence of the blunders of 
the chiefs of the volunteer movement for independence. 

It is true that, at the same time, the whole volunteer move- 
ment itself fell to the ground. From that moment it dragged on 
a doomed life. " One would have thought," says Dr. Madden, 
" there was national vigor in it for more than an existence of 
fifteen years, and power to effect more than an ephemeral in- 
dependence which lasted only eighteen years." 

But the Catholics had their eyes opened ; they saw that 
the day of resurrection was not yet come for them. It was not 
to be brought about by any Irish Parliament. So far, therefore, 
we were right in stating that the parliamentary record for Ire- 
land is a sad one. It should be said, however, that, from that 
time, many Protestants, like the Bishop of Derry, Crattan, and 
others, have always been firm in their demand for freedom to 
all, and have remained the stanchest supporters of Catholic 
rights. What we have hitherto called James I.'s Ulster col- 
ony, thus was reduced to the Orange party ; and, in that sense, 
the volunteer movement was a real and permanent benefit to 
the country. There is no need to mention the names of many 
distinguished Protestants of our own times, whose whole life 
has been devoted by act, or speech, or both, to the service 
of all. All honor to them ! 

But it is alleged that the Irish Legislature, as framed by the 
Constitution of 1782, gave to the country an uninterrupted fiow 
of prosperity for eighteen years, and hence the volunteer move- 
ment was of great benefit to the race, at least temporarily. We 
will present the case in the strongest light possible contrary to 
our own opinion, and for this we can do no better than borrow 
the arguments of Mr. W. J. O'N. Daunt, in his pamphlet on 
the " Irish Question " (1869) : 

" Accustomed as we are," he says, " since the Union — in 
1800 — to the national distress and chronic disturbance attested 
by the Devon Commissions, Famine Reports, and other official 
sources of information, there seems something scarcely credible 
in the account of Irish pre-Union prosperity — a prosperity 
which contrasted so strongly with the condition of Ireland under 
a Parliament which is called ' Imperial,' but which is essentially 
and overwhelmingly English. But the accounts are given on 
unimpeachable authority. 

" Mr. Jebb, member for Callan in the Irish Parliament, thus 
speaks of the advance of the country in prosperity, in a pamphlet 
published in 1798 : 

" ' In the course of fifteen years, our commerce, our agricult- 
ure, and our manufactures, have swelled to an amount that the 



350 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

most sanguine friends of Ireland would not have dared to prog- 
nosticate.' 

"The bankers of Dublin, tolerably competent witnesses, held 
a meeting on the 18th of December, 1798, at which they re- 
solved, ' that, since the renunciation of Great Britain, in 1782, 
to legislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this 
kingdom have eminently increased.' 

" The Dublin Guild of Merchants did the same on the 14th 
of January, 1797." 

But this testimony and that of others whom we could quote 
was the testimony of men opposed to the " Union." Let us 
look at a few admissions made by the supporters of that meas- 
ure : 

" First comes its author, Mr. Pitt, who, in his speech in the 
English House of Commons, January 31, 1799, having alluded 
to the prosperous condition of Irish commerce in 1785, goes on 
to say : ' But how stands the case now ? The trade is at this 
time infinitely more advantageous to Ireland.' 

" Lord Clare, one of Mr. Pitt's chief instruments in effecting 
the Union, published, in 1798, a pamphlet containing, as quoted 
by Grattan, the following account of Irish progress subsequently 
to 1782 : ' There is not a nation on the habitable globe which 
has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture and 
manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period.' 

" Finally, Mr. Secretary Coke, in a Unionist pamphlet, said 
at that time : ' We have had the experience of these twenty 
years; for it is universally admitted that no country in the 
world ever made such rapid advances as Ireland has done in 
these respects.' " 

All this was undoubtedly true ; and it is not our intention to 
admire what was called the Union, nor to advocate it. Those 
of the various writers cited, who spoke so dogmatically in the 
above passages, had in their minds only material and external 
prosperity, and that even of only one class of citizens. Those 
who wish well to Ireland cannot be satisfied with this. 

]^ot a single name of the favorers or opposers of the Union, 
here quoted as witnesses, is Celtic. It would be interesting to 
know what the Celts of the island, that is, the greater part of its 
inhabitants, thought at the time, not of the Union, but of their 
own Parliament, and how much of this great material prosperity 
fell to their portion. 

Surely they were all opposed to a Union which for a variety 
of reasons had grown odious in their sight ; but, did they, could 
they, approve of the acts of their Legislature prior to the Union 
with England ? Were they satisfied with those tokens of pros- 
perity in favor of a class which had systematically oppressed 
them ? Even granting that they were Christian enough not to 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 351 

feel envy at tlie success of their Protestant fellow-countrymen, 
did they not, and were tliey not riglit to, rue the day which, by 
an act of that same Legislature, shut them off as a body from all 
those advantages. 

For it must be remembered that it was at the instigation of 
many of those volunteers who had been so ready to receive the 
muskets from their Catholic neighbors, for the purpose of strik- 
ing a blow for liberty, that none of the penal statutes were re- 
pealed, and the Irish Catholics continued to groan, at least as far 
as the law went, under the fearful oppressions of which the last 
chapter furnished a feeble sketch. Hence, to speak in their pres- 
ence of their commerce, of their manufactures, of their agricult- 
ure, of the increase of their wealth, and so on, was a bitter mock- 
ery, which they could not but resent in their inmost soul. 

"Was the cause of all their miseries removed by such a free 
and independent Parliament ? Where could be the agricultural 
prosperity of a people which was not entitled, legally, to own an 
inch of their soil, or lease more than two acres of it % How could 
they engage in prosperous trade when, at the suit of a " discov- 
erer," they were liable to be compelled to hand over to him the 
surplus of a paltry income % How could they even contemplate 
engaging in any manufactures, when the laws reduced them to 
the frightful state of pauperism which we have shudderingly 
glanced at ? And those laws were preserved, and retained on the 
statute-book, by the very men who vaunted of the prosperity of 
Ireland ! 

It cannot, then, be too strongly reasserted that the social 
position of Ireland had experienced no change whatever, and 
that the separation of classes, spoken of with such well-merited 
rebuke by Edmund Burke, still stood unaltered : 

'•• They divided the nation into two distinct parties, without 
common interest, sympathy, or connection. One of these bodies 
was to possess all the franchises, all the property, all the educa- 
tion ; the other was to be composed of drawers of water and 
cutters of turf for them. 

" Every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion 
as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked 
upon as enemies to God and man ; and, indeed, as a race of 
bigoted savages, who were a disgrace to human nature itself. 

" To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it 
should be degraded." 

And, even supposing the prosperity of which so much talk 
was made to have been universal, so that all had a real share in 
it, how long would, it have remained so, if the Irish Parliament 
had continued to exist, and not become merged in the English, 
or, as it was termed. Imperial Legislature % How long could 
the two separated bodies, sitting, the one in Dublin, the other 



352 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

in "Westminster, have acted in concert, withont breaking out into 
violent and mutual recrimination, with all its attendant evils ? 

The diiSiculty showed itself at the very outset, and when the 
first question of the relative status of both Legislatures arose. 

Mr. Fox, the great Liberal minister of the king, endeavored 
to solve this difiicultj by making a distinction between internal 
and external legislation : L^eland was never to be interfered 
with in her Parliament, with respect to her internal questions, 
while the English legislative body possessed the right to step in 
in all measures regarding external legislation. This seems very 
much like what is now proposed by home-rule. 

Here is the answer given to this in the tribune of Dublin by 
Mr. Walsh : " With respect to the fine-spun distinction of the 
English minister between the internal and external legislation, it 
seems to me the most absurd position, and at the same time the 
most ridiculous one, that possibly could be laid down, when ap- 
plied to an independent people. 

" Ireland is independent, or she is not ; if she is independent, 
no power on earth can make laws to bind her, internally or ex- 
ternally, but the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland." 

Mr. Walsh, a very influential member of the Irish House of 
Commons, saw, as doubtless did many others, cause of disturb- 
ance already for the mutual tranquillity of the two nations. And, 
indeed, his fears soon showed themselves only too well grounded. 
Dr. Madden tells the story : 

"A month had scarcely elapsed since the opening of the 
new Irish Parliament in 1782, before Lord Abingdon, in the 
British House of Peers, moved for leave to bring in a declaratory 
bill, to reassert the right of England to legislate externally for 
Ireland, in matters appertaining to the commerce of the latter. 
A similar motion was made in the British House of Commons 
by Sir George Young. 

" One clause of Lord Abingdon's bill stated that Queen 
Elizabeth, having formerly forbade the King of France to build 
more ships than he then had, without her leave first obtained, it 
is enacted that no Idngdoms, as above stated, Ireland as well as 
others, should presume to bviild a navy or any ships-of-war, 
without leave from the Lord High Admiral of England." 

It is easy to foresee the pretty quarrel preparing. Once 
again, then, it may be asserted that the record of Irish Parliaments 
is a sad one. 

But could more have been expected of it ? Is the scope of 
measures, within the capabilities of any legislative assembly of 
modern times, comprehensive enough to embrace every thing 
of importance to a Catholic people, such as the Irish nation has 
ever been ? 

The general question of parliamentary rule is a very com- 



DELUSIVE- HOPES. 353 

t 

plicated one. The modern Parliament is a very different tiling 
from the old assemblies of the representatives of various orders 
in any state. With the Church originated those ancient institu- 
tions, which in certain parts of Europe partook at once of the 
twofold nature of councils and political assemblies. 

This order has passed away, and no one thinks to-day of re- 
viving those time-honored institutions, however much political 
writers may be inclined to favor despotism on the one hand, or 
anarchy on the other. "What, then, is the origin of the modern 
Parliament ? It grew into being in England during the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, emanating as it were, slowly, 
out of the decomposition of the old Parliaments ; the aristocracy, 
and the Church chiefly, losing more and more the influence once 
belonging to them, which, in old times, made them paramount 
in those state deliberations. This is one of the chief features of 
the newly-modelled British Constitution, which is of very recent 
growth, and became fixed and settled only after the downfall of 
the Stuart dynasty, receiving additional modifications in the con- 
test of parties under the Brunswick and Hanover lines of kings. 

It is, consequently, an altogether British growth of recent 
date, particularly well adapted for England, whose prosperity 
since its establishment has ever been on the increase. But it is 
very doubtful whether other countries have derived equal benefit 
from its adoption. 

Toward the end of last century, some few Frenchmen of note 
attempted, with Mounier at their head, to reproduce a feeble copy 
of it in France. Their failure is too well known to the world : 
how their English ideas were scouted by the people, while a far 
more radical revolution swept away every vestige of the old 
French Constitution, without substituting in its stead any thing 
save crude and infidel ideas, which resulted in anarchy. 

The lamentable failure of the first attempt was no discourage- 
ment to other political theorists ; and the century has witnessed 
and still witnesses every day essays at English legislation, as em- 
bodied in the constitution of its Parliaments chiefly, all over Eu- 
rope; and all, as sanguine writers would have us believe, to 
serve as the stepping-stone for the " Universal Eepublic," which 
is to regenerate the world. 

The great questions in all those assemblies are of material 
interests, material prosperity, material projects. Of the moral 
well-being of the people seldom or never a word is heard ; and, 
whenever a moral question does come up for discussion, the vague- 
ness of the theories advanced and discussed, the indecision of the 
measures proposed, the want of unity in the views developed, 
show how unfit are modern legislators for even touching on what 
concerns the soul of man. The legislators themselves feel that 
their character is far from being a sacred one, and that the spirit- 
23 



354 DELUSIVE. HOPES. 

ual element is not comprehended in tlieir world. And they are 
certainly right. 

Even the measures of external policy are not universally suc- 
cessful in securing the material well-being of the people. In 
France, at least, the various legislatures which have succeeded one 
another have perhaps been productive of as much harm in that 
regard as the liberty of the press and freedom of public discus- 
sion, which have always had and always will have their ardent 
advocates, and the existence of which is compatible with public 
order in some countries, but not in others. 

The same, with certain reservations, is true of the Spanish- 
American republics, Brazil, and now of Spain, Italy, and other 
European nations. The legislative machine which is found to 
work so well in England, and what were or still are her colonies, 
seems to get out of order in climates and among nations unac- 
customed to it, even as far as material prosperity is concerned. 

But it is neither our object to write a history of Parliaments, 
nor absolutely to condemn those modern institutions by the few 
words devoted to them. All we wish to insist upon is, that all 
the evils of nations are not cured by them, and that they should 
not be taken as in themselves absolutely desirable and all-suffi- 
cient. 

As to their probable fate in the future, their modern dress 
is not yet two centuries old, and the seeds of decay already ap- 
pear in many places. A few questions are sufficient to demon- 
strate this : Can a Parliament, as understood to-day, last for any 
length of time and work successfully, when composed for a great 
part of corrupt legislators who have been returned by corrupt 
electors? Has not the progress of corruption on both sides, 
elected and electors, been of late alarmingly on the increase ? 
What space of time is requisite for legislation to come to a stand- 
still, and prove to modern nations the impossibility of carrying 
on even material affairs with such corrupt machinery ? It requires 
no great foresight to reply to these questions. 

And yet it is on this tottering institution that the Ireland of 
our days has set her hope. She imagines that, this once gained, 
prosperity and happiness are insured ; that, without it, she can- 
not but be discontented, as she is and must be if she possesses 
any feeling. And such is the anomaly of her position that, with 
this conviction firmly set before us, we believe she is right in 
demanding home-rule, and that by insisting upon it she will 
eventually attain it ; yet are we convinced that, having obtained 
it, her evils will not be cured, nor her happiness served. We 
prize her highly enough to think her worthy of something better, 
which " something" we are sure God keeps in reserve for her. 

Suppose her earnest wish granted, and a home Parliament 
given her. Suppose even the old question of her relations with 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 355 

the English Legislature determined. A great difficulty has been 
settled satisfactorily, though it is difficult to see how this may 
come about. But supposing the questions for her discussion and 
free determination being clearly defined, home-rule becomes pos- 
sible without exciting the opposition of the rival Parliament of 
Great Britain. '^ 

What is likely to be the composition of her state institution ? 
and what the programme of its labors ? 

In the composition of her two Houses, if she have two, the 
Catholics will not be excluded as they were in 1782 ; a great 
change certainly, and fraught no doubt with great benefit to the 
country. But will the Lnglish element cease to predominate ? 
The native race has been kept so long in a state of bondage that 
few members of it certainly will take a leading part in the dis- 
cussions. How many even will be allowed to influence the elec- 
tion of members by their votes or their capacity ? Universal suf- 
frage can scarcely be anticipated, perhaps even it would not be 
desirable. The question is certainly a doubtful one. Of one 
thing are we certain regarding the composition of an Irish Par- 
liament : it would not really represent the nation. 

For the nation is Catholic to the core ; the sufferings of more 
than two centuries have made religion dearer to her than life ; 
all she has been, all she is to-day, may be summed up in one 
word — Catholic. I^othing has been left her but this proud and 
noble title, which of all others her enemies would have wrested 
from her. The nation exists to-day, independently of parliamen- 
tary enactments, in spite of the numberless parliamentary de- 
crees of former times ; she is living, active, working, and doing 
wonders, which shall come under notice. See how busy she has 
been since first allowed to do. Her altars, her religious houses, 
her asylums, every thing holy that was in ruins — all have been 
restored. 

ITot satisfied with working so energetically on her own soil, 
she has crossed over to England, where the great and unex- 
pected Catholic revival, which has struck such awe and fear into 
the hearts of sectarians, is in great measure due to her. 

Cross the broad Atlantic, and even the vast Southern Ocean, 
and the contemj^lation of Irish activity in ISTorth America, 
Australia, and all the English colonies, the intense vitality dis- 
played by this so long down-trodden people is amazing. But all 
this activity, all this vitality, is employed in establishing on 
a firm and indestructible basis everywhere the holy Catholic 
Church. 

Looking on all this, say then whether Ireland is truly Cath- 
olic, whether the nation is any thing but Catholic. 

But can her new Parliament be Catholic ? 

Ko ! No one imagines such a thing possible^ no one thinks, 



356 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

no one dreams of it. It is clear, then, that it cannot represent 
the nation. 

Who will go to compose it ? Men who will discard — such is 
the modern expression — discard their creed, and leave it at the 
door. JSTothing better can be expected. It is true that the bitter 
feeling engendered for so long a time By religious questions is 
not likely to show itself again ; or though, to speak more correct- 
ly, a religious question never was raised in Ireland, the whole 
people being one on that subject ; but it may be hoped that the 
bitter persecution against every thing Catholic is not likely to 
recur, whatever may be the composing elements of the new 
Houses of Parliament. 

In the impossibility of even guessing at the probable opinions 
of the men who are to have the future fate of Ireland in their 
hands, it may be fairly predicted that, within their legislative 
halls, religious and consequently moral questions will only be 
approached in the spirit of liberalism. Probably, the only thing 
attempted will be the rendering of the people externally happy 
and prosperous, supposing the majority of the members animated 
by true patriotic principles ; and indeed the aspirations of all 
who wish well to Ireland are limited to external or material 
prosperity ; and, for our own part, we do not consider this of 
slight moment. But is this all that the Irish people require ? 

They have been brought so low in the scale of humanity that 
every thing has to be accomplished to bring about their resurrec- 
tion ; and the " every thing " is comprised in substituting flesh- 
meat for potatoes and good warm clothing for rags. Whoever 
says that the Irish people can be contented with such a restora- 
tion as this, knows little of their noble nature, and has never 
read their heart. 

Assuredly, they have a right to those worldly blessings of 
which they have been so long deprived ; and we would not be 
understood as saying that one of the primary objects of good 
government is not to confer those material blessings on the 
people ; nay, it is our belief that, when a whole nation has been 
so long subjected to all the evils which not only render this life 
miserable, but absolutely intolerable, it is incumbent on those 
intrusted with the direction of affairs to remedy those evils 
instantly, and endeavor to make the people forget their misfor- 
tunes by, at least, the enjoyments of this life's ordinary comforts. 
Forgetfulness of the past can be obtained by no other means. 
And this is a very simple, but, at the sai^e time, very satisfactory 
answer to the question so often put and so often replied to in 
such a variety of ways, " Why is Ireland discontented ? " 

But, while admitting the truth, nay, the necessity of all this, 
the government of a Catholic people has not fulfilled its whole 
duty when it has exerted itself to the utmost to procure, and 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 357 

filially succeeded in procuring, tlie temporal happiness of tlie 
nation. In addition to this, it must consult its moral and reli- 
gious wants, or a great part of its duty remains neglected. 

This, indeed, does not nowadays occur to the minds of the 
majority of men, who have, it would appear, agreed among them- 
selves to consider it an axiom of government that the rulers of 
a people should have no other object in view than the material 
comfort and welfare of the masses. They do not reflect that the 
wants of a nation must be satisfied in their entirety, and that its 
moral and religious needs are of no less importance, to say the 
least, than the temporal. This is evident in all those countries 
where, in imitation of England, or at her instigation, parliamen- 
tary governments are now in operation — countries which include 
not only Europe, without excepting Greece and her chief islands, 
but Southern Africa at the Cape, America, JSTorth and South, 
Australia, and the large islands of Jamaica, Tasmania, "New 
Zealand, and several groups of Polynesia, preparing Asia for the 
boon which, probably, is destined to show itself in Japan first, 
spreading thence all over the largest continent of the warld. 

Wherever modern Parliaments flourish, there material inter- 
ests alone are consulted. This is a new feature of Japhetism ; 
and God alone knows how long nations will be satisfied with 
such a state of things ! 

But if non-Catholic nations thus limit their aspirations, there 
is all the more reason why a Catholic people cannot imitate 
them in such a course, particularly if that people has for cen- 
turies submitted to every evil of this life in order to preserve its 
religion, showing that, in its eyes, religious blessings rank far 
above all imaginable material advantages ; and we all know such 
to be the case for Ireland. 

But, it may be asked, what are those religious wants which 
must be satisfied, and how are we to know them ? The answer, 
to a Catholic, is plain, and nothing is easier of recognition. 
What the spiritual guides of the nation consider of paramount 
importance and of absolute necessity, is of that character, and 
the government which neglects to listen to remonstrances coming 
from such a quarter, shows thereby that it is ignorant of, or 
slights, its plain duty. Ever since the load of tyranny, which 
weighed down the Irish people, has been removed, if not entirely, 
at least sufiered a very appreciable reduction, since the rulers of 
the Church in that unhappy country have been able to lift up 
their voice, and proclaimed what they considered of supreme 
importance to those under their charge, is it not a strange truth 
that their voice has never ceased remonstrating, and that, at this 
very moment, it is as loud in protestation as ever ? Wlien has it 
been listened to as it should be? Is it likely to meet more 
regard if Ireland obtains home-rule ? It grieves us to say that 



358 DELUSIVE HOPES, 

the only answer which can be given to this last question is still 
an emphatic " No ! " 

And for the very simple reason, already given, that Ireland 
cannot have a truly Catholic Parliament, and that all the great 
measures which wonld occupy the attention of the Catholic 
members, in the event of their meeting at Dublin, would be 
shemes for the advancement of manufactures, trade, the con- 
struction of ships, tenant-right laws, etc. ; all very excellent things 
in their way, and to which Ireland has an undoubted right, 
which will be strongly contested, and in the struggle for which 
she may again be worsted ; which, even if she obtains, will not 
enable her to compete with England, and which, after and above 
all, do not correspond to the heart-beat of the nation — ^the res- 
toration complete and entire of the Catholic Church all over her 
broad land. 

It may be well to remark that the broad assertion just laid 
down involves no reprisals against the rights of the minority. 
That minority, backed by the English Government, has enjoyed 
nearly three centuries of oppression and tyranny, has taxed hu- 
man ingenuity to the utmost for the purpose of concocting 
schemes of destruction against the majority : it has failed. The 
majority, which at last breathes freely, can well afford not to 
raise a finger in retaliation, and to leave what is called freedom 
of conscience to those who so long refused it. The result may 
be left to the operation of natural laws and the holy workings 
of Providence. But their religious rights ought, at least, to be 
secured to them entire ; the rights of their Church to be left 
forever perfectly free and untrammelled. 

But, how much has been done against this, even of late ? 
Why has a Protestant university so many privileges, while a 
similar Catholic institution is refused recognition ? To answer 
what purpose have the Queen's Colleges been established ? The 
Catholic bishops certainly possess rights with regard to the edu- 
cation of their flocks ; with what persistence have not those 
rights been either attacked or circumvented ! If the Protestant 
Establishment has been finally abolished, have not its ministers 
obtained by the very act of abolition concessions which give 
them still great weight, morally and materially, in the scale 
opposed to Catholic proselytism, nay, preservation ? Is it not a 
stain even yet, if not in the eye of the law, at least in that of the 
English colonized in Ireland, to be a " Soman Catholic ? " Is 
"souperism" so completely dead that it never can revive? , How 
many means are still left in the hands of the Protestant minority 
to vex, annoy, and impoverish the supposed free majority ? 

Whoever considers the matter seriously cannot but acknowl- 
edge that in Ireland there exists still a vast amount of open or 
silent opposition to the Church of the majority, and a Church 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 359 

which the majority loves with such deep affection that, so long 
as the least remnant of the old oppression remains, so long must 
Ireland remain discontented. 

And it is more than doubtful whether home-rule would 
be a sufficient remedy for such a state of things, owing to the fact, 
already insisted upon, that the new Parliament could not be a 
Catholic Parliament. 

The reader may easily perceive what was meant by saying 
that the entire restoration of the Catholic Church in the island 
does not suppose the consequent extirpation of heresy ; but it 
clearly supposes the perfectly free exercise of all her rights by 
the Church. ]^othing short of this can satisfy the Irish people. 

III. We pass on to the consideration of a third delusive hope, 
that of the people regaining all their rights by the overwhelming 
force of numbers and armed resistance to tyranny — the advocacy 
of physical force, as it is called ; in other words, the right and 
necessity of open insurrection, or underhand and secret associa- 
tions, evidently requiring for success the cooperation of the 
numerous revolutionary societies of Europe : a criminal delusion, 
which has brought many evils upon the country, and which is 
still cherished by too many of her sons. Though we purpose 
speaking freely on this subject, we hope that our language may 
be that of moderation and justice. 

To a Catholic, who has either witnessed or heard of the 
frightful evils brought on modern nations by the doctrine of the 
right of insurrection, of armed force, of open rebellion, against 
real or fancied wrong, that doctrine cannot but be loathsome 
and detestable. 

True, there is for nations, as for individuals, something re- 
sembling the right of self-defence. ISTo Catholic theologian can 
assert that a people is bound to bow under the yoke of tyranny, 
when it can shake that tyranny off ; and it is this truth which 
affords a pretext to many advocates of what is called the right 
of insurrection. Moreover, there is no doubt that, in the case of 
Ireland particularly, the Irish had for many centuries a legiti- 
mate government of their own, and when attacked by foreigners, 
who landed on their shores under whatever pretext, they had a 
perfect right, nay, it was the duty of the heads of clans, the pro- 
vincial kings and princes, to protect the whole nation, and the 
part of it intrusted to their special care in particular, against 
open or covert foes. The name of " rebels " was given them by 
the invaders, with no shadow of possible pretext, and the name 
was as justly resented as it was unjustly applied. 

Under the Stuart dynasty the state of the case is still more 
clear : for then they were fighting on the side of the English sov- 
ereigns to whom they had submitted ; and, in waging war against 
the enemies of their king and country, they were not only 



360 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

enforcing their riglit, but performing a higMy-meritorions and in 
some cases heroic duty. Yet the' name of " rebels " was again 
applied to them, and its penalty inflicted upon them, as has been 
seen. 

After their complete subjugation, the right of retaliating on 
their oppressors, even if justifiable in theory, was often illusory 
and indefensible in fact, because of the impossibility of successful 
resistance ; and the secret associations known under the names 
of "Tories," "Eapparees," "White Boys," " Eibbonmen," 
were, with the exception of the first, condemned by the Church. 

But in modern times the right of insurrection cannot possibly 
be defended, if, as can scarcely be avoided, the cause of a Catho- 
lic nation is linked with the various revolutionary societies and 
conspiracies which disgrace modern Europe, endanger society, 
and have all been condemned by the sovereign Pontiff. 

An extensive discussion of both cases — the stubborn resistance 
made after the fall of the Stuarts, and some of the attempts at 
independence of later times — would show at once the diflerence 
between the two cases, and prevent thinking men from ranking 
the " Tories " of ancient times with the avowed revolutionists of 
our days. Mr. Prendergast has given a fair sketch of the former 
in the second "edition of his " Cromwellian Settlement." 

The reader who may peruse this very interesting account 
can notice a remarkable coincidence ; one, however, which to 
Our knowledge has not yet been pointed out : the very scenes 
enacted in Ireland, during the long resistance ofiered to oppres- 
sion after the downfall of the Stuart dynasty, were reenacted in 
Prance during the Peign of Terror, and for some time after, 
throughout the districts which had risen in insurrection against 
the tyranny of the Convention, and both cases were certainly 
examples of right warring against might. 

In fact, to a person acquainted with the history of the violent 
changes which, during the last century, modern theories, meta- 
physical systems, and, above all, the working of secret societies, 
have caused, the reading of the history of England and Ireland, 
from the Peformation down, offers new sources of interest, by 
showing how the last frightful convulsion in France was merely 
a copy of the first in England, at least as far as the means em- 
ployed in each go, if not in the ultimate object. 

In England the revolution was begun by the monarch him- 
self, with a view of rendering his power more absolute and uni- 
versal by the rejection of the papal supremacy, and, consequent- 
ly, the destruction of the Catholic Church. In France the revo- 
lution was begun by the leaders of the middle classes, who made 
use of the immense power given them by the secret societies 
which then flourished, and the influence of an unbridled press, 
to destroy royalty and aristocracy, that they might themselves 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 861 

obtain tlie supreme power and rule the country. The object of 
the two revolutions was therefore widely different ; but the 
means employed in bringing them about, when considered in 
detail, are found to have been perfectly identical. 

In both countries, on the side of the revolutionary party or 
of the National Assembly, various oaths were imposed and en- 
forced, troops dispatched, battles fought, devastating bands rav- 
aged the country while in a state of insurrection, the same bar- 
barous orders in La Vendee as in Ireland, so that the language 
even employed in the second case is an exact counterpart of that 
in the first. There is destruction resolved upon ; then the au- 
thorities desisting and resolving on a change of policy, though 
with a rigid continuance of the police measures, including in 
both cases " domiciliary visits," inquests by commissioners, 
courts-martial in the first case, revolutionary tribunals in the 
second — consequent wholesale executions on both sides. There 
were the decrees of confiscation carried out with the utmost bar- 
barity, resulting in sudden changes of fortune, the class that was 
aristocratic being often reduced to beggary, while its wealth was 
enjoyed by the new men of the middle classes. The peasants 
derive very little benefit from the revolution in France — none 
whatever, or rather the very reverse of benefit, in Ireland. 
And, to go into the minutest details, there are the same inform- 
ers, spies, troops of armed police, or adventurers on the hunt to 
discover, prosecute, and destroy the last remnants of the insur- 
gents in France as well as in Ireland. 

In considering the religious side of the question, the parallel 
would be found still more striking, as the proscribed ministers 
of religion were of the same fiiith in France as in the British 
Isles, while the means adopted, for their destruction were ex- 
actly similar. 

On the side of the insurgents the same comparison holds 
good. In both cases there is the first refusal to obey unjust de- 
crees, the same stubborn opposition to more stringent acts of 
legislature, the emigration of the aristocratic classes,- the devoted- 
ness of the clergy, with here and there an unfortunate exception, 
the same mode of concealment resorted to — false doors, traps, 
secret closets, disguise, etc. ; the fiying to the country and con- 
cealment in woods, caves, hills, or mountains ; and, when the 
burden grows intolerable, and open resistance, even without 
hope of success, becomes inevitable, there are the same resources, 
method of organization, attack, call to arms, call to Heaven, the 
same heroism ; yes, and the same approval of religion and ad- 
miration of all noble hearts throughout the world. 

The only difference consists in the fact that in France the 
struggle lasted a few years only ; in Ireland, centuries. In 
France the fury of the revolution soon spent itself in horrors ; 



362 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

in Ireland the sternness of tlie persecuting power stood grim and 
unrelaxing for ages, adding decree to decree, army to army. In 
France, numerous hunters of priests and of " brigands," as they 
were called, flourished only for. a short decade of years ; in Ire- 
land similar hunters of priests and of " Tories " carried on their 
infamous trade for more than a century. 

In the case of the latter country, too, the confiscation was 
much more thorough and permanent, the emigration complete 
and final ; but, in both.cases, the Catholic religion outlived the 
storm, and lifted up her head more gloriously than ever as soon 
as its fury had abated. 

Finally, to come to the point, which calls now more immedi- 
ately for attention, if the campaigns of Owen Roe CNeill, of 
Brunswick, and Sarsfield, were the models of the great insuirrec- 
tion of La Vendee and Brittany, the bands of " Tories " and 
"rebels," scattered through Ireland at the time of the Cromwell- 
ian settlement, gave an example for the " Chouan " raids which 
in France followed the blasted hopes of the royalists. 

How ought both cases to be considered with reference to the 
general rules of morality % How were they considered at the 
time by religious and conscientious men ? 

There is no doubt that excesses were committed by Tories in 
Ireland, and Chouan s in France, which every Christian must 
condemn ; but there can also be little doubt that such of them 
as were not deranged by passion, but allowed their inborn reli- 
gious feelings to speak even in those dreadful times, were re- 
strained, either by their own consciences or by the advice of the 
men of God whom they consulted, from committing many 
crimes which would otherwise have resulted from their unfor- 
tunate position. All this, however, resolves itself into a con- 
sideration of individual cases which cannot here be taken into 
account. 

Our only question is the cause of both Tories and Chouans 
in the abstract. From the beginning it was clearly a desperate 
cause, and, admitting that the motive which prompted it was 
generous, honorable, and praiseworthy, nothing could be ex- 
pected to ensue from its advocacy but accumulated disaster and 
greater misfortunes still. Of either case, then, abstractly con- 
sidered, religion cannot speak with favor. 

But, when an impartial and fair-minded man takes into con- 
sideration all the circumstances of both cases, particularly of that 
presented in Ireland, as given by Mr. Prendergast, with all the 
glaring injustice, atrocious proceedings, and barbarous cruelty of 
the opposing party taken into account, who will dare say that 
men, driven to madness by such an accumulation of misery and 
torture, were really accountable before God for all the conse- 
quences resulting from their wretched position ? 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 363 

In the words quoted by the author of the " Cromwellian Set- 
tlement : " " Had they not a right to live on their own soil ? 
were they obliged in conscience to go to a foreign country, with 
the indelible mark left on them by an atrocious and originally 
illegitimate government ? " And, if the simple act of remaining 
in their country, to which they had undoubtedly a right, forced 
them to live as outlaws, and adopt a course of predatory warfare, 
otherwise unjustifiable, but in their circumstances the only one 
possible for them, to whom could the fault be ascribed ? Are 
they to be judged harshly as criminals and felons, worthy only 
of the miserable end to which all of them, sooner or later, were 
doomed ? Is all the reproach and abuse to be lavished on them, 
and not a breath of it to fall on those who made them what they 
were ? Who of us could say whether, if placed in the same po- 
sition, he would not have considered the life they led, and the 
inevitable death they faced, as the only path of duty and honor ? 

We are thoroughly convinced that the first Irish " Tories " 
deemed it their right to make themselves the avengers of Ire- 
land's wrongs, and consider themselves as true patriots and the 
heroic defenders of their country, and that many honorable and 
conscientious men then, living agreed with them. And the peo- 
ple, who always sided with and aided them, had after all certain- 
ly a right to their opinion as the only true representatives of the 
country left in those unfortunate times. 

Thus far we have considered the right of resistance on the 
part of the old " Tories ; " we now come to what has been called 
the second case — the right of insurrection advocated by modern 
revolutionists, chiefly when connected with the unlawful organi- 
zations so widely spread to-day. This, indeed, is the great delu- 
sive hope of to-day, which must be gone into more thoroughly, 
in order to show that Ireland, instead of encouraging among her 
children the slightest attachment to the modern revolutionary 
spirit, ought to insist on. their all, if faithful to the noble princi- 
ples of their forefathers, opposing it, as indeed the great mass of 
the nation has opposed it, strenuously, though it has met with 
the almost constant support of England, who has spread it broad- 
cast to suit her own purposes. Ireland's hope must come from 
another quarter. 

Let us look clearly at the origin and nature of this revolution- 
ary spirit, so diflPerent from the lawful right of resistance always 
advocated by the great Catholic theologians. 

The nature of this spirit is to produce violent changes in 

fovernment and society by violent means ; and it originated in 
rst weakening and then destroying the power of the Popes over 
Christendom. Two words only need be said on both these in- 
teresting topics — words which, we hope, may be clear and con- 
vincing. 



364 " DELUSIVE HOPES. 

The very word revolutionary indicates violence ; and it is so 
understood by all who use it with' a knowledge of its meaning. 
A revolutionary proceeding in a state, is one which, is sanctioned 
neither by the law nor the constitution, but is rapidly carried on 
for any purpose whatever. Violence has always been used in 
the various revolutions of modern times, and, when people talk 
of a peaceful revolution, it is at once understood that the term is 
not used in its ordinary significance. 

On this point, probably, all are agreed ; and, therefore, there 
is no need of further explanation. On the other hand, many 
will be inclined to controvert the second proposition ; and, there- 
fore, its unquestionable truth must be shown. 

That the position held by the Popes at the head of Christen- 
dom for many ages was of paramount influence, and that to 
them, in fact, is due the existence of the state of Europe, known 
as Christendom, is now admitted almost by all since the investiga- 
tions of learned and painstaking historians, Protestants as well 
Catholics, have been given to the world. But had the Popes any 
particular line of policy, and did they favor one kind of govern- 
ment more than another ? This is a very fair question, and well 
worthy of consideration. 

Any kind of government is good only according to the cir- 
cumstances of the nation subjected to it. What may suit one 
people would not give happiness to another, and democratic, 
aristocratic, or monarchical governments, have each their respec- 
tive uses, so that none of them can be condemned or approved 
absolutely. Ko one will ever be able to show that the Roman 
Pontiffs held any exclusive theory on this subject, and adopted 
a stern policy from which they did not recede. 

But a positive line of policy they did hold to, namely, the 
insuring the stability of society by securing the stability of gov- 
ernments. 

"Whoever reads the life of Gregory YII. side by side with that 
of William the Conqueror, is at first astonished to find Hilde- 
brand, who, though not yet Pope, was already powerful in the 
counsels of the Papacy, favoring the l^orman king, although 
William eventually proved far from grateful. But, when the 
reader comes to inquire what can have moved the great monk to 
take up this line of action, he will find that a deep political 
motive lay at the bottom of it, which throws a fiood of light over 
the policy of the Popes and the history of Europe during the 
middle ages. He finds Hildebrand persuaded that William of 
Kormandy possessed the true hereditary right to the crown of 
England, and the policy of the Popes was already in favor of 
hereditary right in kingdoms, thereby to insure the stability of 
dynasties, and consequently that of society itself. 

Harold, son of Godwin, belonged in no way to the royal race 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 365 

of Anglo-Saxon kings. The Dukes of ITormandy tad contracted 
alliances by marriage with the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, and were 
thought to be more nearly related to Edward the Confessor than 
Harold, whose only title was derived from his sister. 

What had been the state of Europe up to that time ? Since 
the establishment and conversion of the northern races, a con- 
stant change of rulers, an ever-recurring moving of territorial 
limits, and consequently an endless disturbance . in all that 
secures the stability of rights, was common everywhere : in Eng- 
land, under the heptarchy ; in France, under the Carlovingians ; 
in the various states of Germany ; everywhere, except, perhaps, 
in a part of Italy, where small republics were springing up from 
municipal communes, which were better adapted to the wants 
of the people. 

The great evils of those times were owing to these perpetual 
changes, which all came from the undefined rights of succession 
to power, as left by Charlemagne ; a striking proof that a mon- 
arch may be a man of genius, a great and acceptable ruler, and 
still fail to see the consequences to future times of the legacy he 
leaves them in the incomplete institutions of his own time. W ell 
has Bossuet said, that " human wisdom is always short of some- 
thing." 

Those rapid, and, to us, wonderful partitions of empires and 
kingdoms ; those loose and ill-defined rules of succession in Ger- 
many. France, England, and elsewhere ; productive of revolution 
at the death of every sovereign, and often during every reign, 
showed the Popes that hereditary rights ought to be clear and 
fixed, and confined to one person in each nation. Erom that 
period, date the long lines of the Capetians in France, the Plan- 
tagenets in England ; while rights of a similar kind are intro- 
duced into Spam and Portugal ; likewise into the various states 
of Northern Germany, or Scandinavia ; and Southern Italy, or 
ISTorman Sicily — the rest of Italy and Germany are placed on a 
different footing, the empire and the popedom being both elective. 

Such was the grand policy of the Popes inaugurated by Hilde- 
brand, which came out in all its strong features, at the same 
time, under his powerful influence. Such was the policy which 
insured the stability of Europe for upward of six hundred years ; 
a set of views to which a word only can be devoted here, but on 
which volumes would not be thrown away. 

In consequence of it, for six hundred years dynasties seldom 
changed ; the territorial limits of each great division of Europe 
remained, on the whole, settled ; and an order of society ensued, 
of such a nature that any father of a family might rest assured 
of the state of his children and grandchildren after him. 

In this respect, therefore, as in many others, the papacy was 
the key-stone of Christendom. 



366 DELUSIVE HOPES, 

But as soon as Protestantism came to contest, not only the 
temporal, but even the spiritual supremacy of the Popes ; when, 
taking advantage of the trouble of the Church, the so-called 
Catholic sovereigns, while pretending to render all honor to the 
spiritual supremacy of the sovereign Pontiffs, refused to acknowl- 
edge in them any right of lifting their warning voice, and calling 
on the powers of the world to obey the great and unchangeable 
laws of religion and justice, then did the long-established stabili- 
ty of Europe begin to give way, while the whole continent en- 
tered upon its long era of revolution, which is still in full way, 
and, as yet, is far from having produced its last consequences. 

England, the most guilty, was the first to feel the effect of the 
shock. The Tudors flattered themselves that, by throwing aside 
what they called the yoke of Home, they had vastly increased 
their power, and so they did for the moment, while the dynasty 
that succeeds them sees rebellion triumphant, and the head of a 
king fall beneath the axe of an executioner. 

She is said to have benefited, nevertheless, by her gi*eat revo- 
lution, and by the subsequent introduction of a new dynasty. 
She has certainly chanted a loud p?ean of triumph, and at this 
moment is still exultant over the effects of her modern policy, 
from the momentary success of the new ideas she has dissemi- 
nated through the world, and above all from that immense 
spread of parliamentary governments which have sprung into ex- 
istence everywhere under her guidance, and mainly through her 
agency. 

And the cause of her triumph was that, after a few years of 
commotion, she seemed to have obtained a kind of stability 
which was a sufficiently good copy of the old order under the 
Popes, and won for her apparently the gratitude of mankind ; 
but that stability is altogether illogical, and cannot long stand. 
There is an old, though now trite, saying to the effect that when 
you " sow the wind you must reap the whirlwind," and no one 
can fail to see the speedy realization of the truth of this adage on 
her part. Over the full tide of her prosperity there is a mighty, 
irresistible, and inevitable storm visibly gathering. At last she 
has come to nearly the same state of mental anarchy which she 
has been so powerful to spread in Europe. After reading " Lo- 
thair," the work of one of her great statesmen, all intelligent 
readers must exclaim, " Babylon ! how hast thou fallen ! " With- 
in a few years, possibly, nothing will remain of her former great- 
ness but a few shreds, and men will witness another of those 
awful examples of a mighty empire falling in the midst of the 
highest seeming prosperity. 

When a nation has no longer any fixed principle to go by, 
when the minds of her leaders are at sea on all great religious 
and moral questions, when the people openly deny the right of 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 367 

the few to rule, wlien a fabric, raised altogether on aristocracy, 
finds the substratum giving way, and democratic ideas seated 
even upon the summit of the edifice, there must be, as is said, 
" a rattling of old bones," and a shaking of the skeleton of what 
was a body. 

How long, then, will the mock stability established by the 
deep wisdom of England's renowned statesmen have stood ? A 
century or two of dazzling material prosperity succeeded by 
long ages of woe, such as the writer of the " Battle of Dorking," 
with all his imagination, could not find power enough to de- 
scribe ; for no Prussian, or any other foreign army, will bring 
that catastrophe about, but the breath of popular fury. 

But our purpose is not to utter prophecies — rather to re- 
hearse facts already accomplished. 

England, then, was the first to feel the shock of the earth- 
quake which was to overthrow the old stability of Europe. It is 
known how Germany has ever since been a scene of continual 
wars, dynastic changes, and territorial confusion. What evils 
have not the wars of the present century brought upon her ! 
Yet, owing to the phlegmatic disposition, one might call it the 
stolidity of the majority of Germans, the disturbances have been 
so far external, and the lower masses of society have scarcely 
been agitated, except by the first rude explosion of Protestant- 
ism, and the sudden patriotic enthusiasm of young plebeians, in 
1814. But mark the suddenness with which, in 1848, all the 
thrones of Germany fell at once under the mere breath of what 
is called " the people ! " It is almost a trite thing to say that, 
where religion no longer exists, there no longer is security or 
peace. Impartial travellers, Americans chiefly, have observed 
of late that, in certain parts of France, there is, in truth, very 
little religious feeling, while in all Protestant Germany, particu- 
larly in -that belonging to Prussia, there is none at all. How 
long, then, is the " new Germanic Empire," so loudly trumpeted 
at Versailles, and afterward so gloriously celebrated at Berlin, 
without the intervention of any religion whatever, likely to 
stand ? How long ? Can it exist till the end of this century ? 
He would be a bold prophet who could confidently say, "Yes." 

As to France, formerly the steadiest of all nations, so deeply 
attached to her dynasty of eight hundred years, although some 
of her kings were little worthy true affection ; many of whose 
citizens have been born in houses a thousand years old, from 
families whose names went back to the darkness of heroic times ; 
which was once so retentive of her old naemories, living in her 
traditions, her former deeds of glory, even in the monuments 
raised in honor of her kings, her great captains, her illustrious 
citizens ; which was chiefly devoted to her time-honored religion, 
mindful that she was born on the day of the baptism of Clovis ; 



368 DELIJSIYE HOPES. 

that slie grew up during tlie Crusades ; that a virgin sent by 
Heaven saved lier from the yoke of the stranger ; that, on attain- 
ing her full maturity, it was religion which chiefly ennobled her ; 
and that her greatest poets, orators, literary men, respected and 
honored religion as the basis of the state, and, by their immortal 
masterpieces, threw a halo around Catholicism — France, which 
still retains in her external appearance something of her old 
steadiness and immutability, so that to the eye of a stranger, 
who sees her for the first time, solidity is the word which comes 
naturally to his mind, as expressive oi every thing around him, 
has only the look of what she was in her days of greatness, and 
on the surface of the earth there is not to-day a more unsteady, 
shaky, insecure spot, scarcely worthy of being chosen by a no- 
mad Tartar as a place wherein to pitch his tent for the night, 
and hurry off at the first appearance of the rising sun on the 
morrow. Can the shifting sands of Libya, the ever-shaking vol- 
canic mountains of equatorial America, the rapidly-forming coral 
islands of the southern seas, give an idea of that fickleness, con- 
stant agitation, and unceasing clamor for change, which have 
made France a by-word in our days ? Who of her children can 
be sure that the house he is building for himself will ever be the 
dwelling of his son ; that the city he lives in to-day will to-mor- 
row acknowledge him as a member of its community ? Who can 
be certain that the constitution of the whole state may not change 
in the night, and he wake the next day to find himself an out- 
law and a fugitive ? 

It is a lamentable fact that for the last hundred years a great 
nation has been reduced to such a state of insecurity, that no 
one dares to think of the future, though all have repudiated the 
past, and thus every thing is reduced for them to the present fleet- 
ing moment. 

And what is likely to be the future destiny of a nation of 
forty million souls, when their present state is such, and such 
the uncertainty of their dearest interests ? They are unwilling 
to quit the soil ; for they have lost all power of expansion by 
sending colonies to foreign shores ; it is difficult for them to 
take a real interest in their own soil, for the great moving spring 
of interest is broken up by the total want of security. May God 
open their eyes to their former folly ; for the folly was all of 
their own making I They have allowed themselves to be thus 
thoroughly imbued with this revolutionary spirit — the first revo- 
lution they hailed with enthusiasm ; when they saw it become 
stained with frightful horrors, they paused a moment, and were 
on the point of acknowledging their error ; but scribblers and so- 
phists came to show them that it failed in being a glorious and 
happy one only because it was not complete ; another and then 
another, and another yet, would finish the work and make them a 



DELUSIYE HOPES. 369 

great nation. Thus have they become altogether a revolutionary- 
people ; and they must abide by the consequences, unless they 
come at last to change their mind. 

But the worst has not been said. This terrible example, in- 
stead of proving a warning to nations, has, on the contrary, drawn 
nearly all of them into the same boiling vortex. England and 
France have led the whole European world captive : people ask 
for a government diiFerent to the one they have ; revolution is 
the consequence, and, with the entry of the revolutionary spirit, 
good-by to all stability and security. Let Italy and Spain bear 
witness if this is not so. 

And the great phenomenon of the age is the collecting of all 
those revolutionary particles into one compact mass, arranged 
and preordained by some master-spirits of evil, who would be 
leaders not of a state or nation only, but of a universal republic 
embracing first Europe, and then the world. So we hear to-day 
of the Internationalists receiving in their " congresses " deputies 
not only from all the great European centres, not only from both 
ends of America, which is now Europeanized, but from South 
Africa, from Australia, New Zealand, from oountries which a few 
years back were still in quiet possession of a comparatively few 
aborigines. 

To come back, then, to the point from which we started, it is 
in this revolutionary spirit, in those conspiracies for revolutions 
to come, that some Irishmen set their hopes for the regeneration 
of their country. It would be well to remind them of the say- 
ings of our Lord : " Can men gather grapes from thorns ? " " By 
their fruits ye shall know them." 

Let the Irish who are truly devoted to their country reflect 
well on the kind of men they would have as allies. "What has 
Ireland in common with these men ? If they know Ireland at 
all, they detest her because of her Catholicism ; and, if Ireland 
knows them, she cannot but distrust and abominate them. 

It has seemed a decree of kind Providence that all attempts 
at rebellion on her part undertaken with the hope of such help, 
have so far not only been miserable failures, but most disgrace- 
fully miscarried and been spent in air, leaving only ridicule and 
contempt for the originators of and partakers in the plots. 

If the vast and unholy scheme which is certainly being or- 
ganized, and w^hich is spreading its fatal branches in all direc- 
tions, should ever succeed, it could not but result in the most 
frightful despotism ever contemplated by men. Ireland in such 
an event would be the infinitesimal part of a chaotic system 
worthy of Antichrist for head. 

But we are confident that such a scheme cannot succeed and 
come to be realized, unless indeed it enter for a short period into 
the designs of an avenging God, who has promised not to de- 
24 



370 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

stroy mankind again by anotlier flood, but assured us by St. Peter 
that be will purify it by fire. 

As a mere design of man, intended for the regeneration of 
humanity and the new creation of an abnormal order of things, 
it cannot possibly succeed, because it is opposed to the nature of 
men, among whom as a whole there can be no perfect unity of 
external government and internal organization, owing to the in- 
finite variety of which we spoke at the beginning, which is as 
strong in human beings as elsewhere. l!^o other body than the 
Catholic Church can hope to adapt -itself to all human races, and 
govern by the same rules all the children of Adam. The decree 
issued of old from the mouth of God is final, and will last as long 
as the earth itself. It is contained in Moses' Canticle : 

" When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated 
the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of each people, ac- 
cording to the number of the children of Israel," or, as the He- 
brew text has it, " He fixed the limits of each people." On this 
passage Aben Ezra remarks that interpreters miderstand the text 
as alluding to the dispersion of nations (Genesis xi.). Those in- 
terpreters were clearly right, although only Jewish rabbles. 

When God deprived man of the unity of language, he took 
away at the same time the possibility of unity of institutions and 
government ; and it will be as hard lor men to defeat that design 
of Providence as for Julian the apostate to rebuild the Temple 
of Jerusalem, of which our Saviour had declared that there 
should not remain " a stone upon a stone. " 

But, though the monstrous scheme cannot ultimately succeed, 
it can and will produce untold evils to human society. By 
alluring workmen and other people of the lower class, it draws 
into the intricate folds of conspiracy, dark projects, and univer- 
sal disorder, an immense array of human beings, whom the revo- 
lutionary spirit had not yet, or at least had scarcely, touched ; it 
undermines and disturbs society in its lowest depths and widest- 
spread foundations, since the lower class always has been and 
still is the most numerous, including by far the great majority 
of men. It consequently renders the stability of order more 
difficult, if not absolutely impossible; it opens up a new era of 
revolutions, more disastrous than any yet known ; for, as has 
already been remarked, and it should be well borne in mind, in 
order that the whole extent of the evil in prospect may be seen, 
so far, all the agitations in Europe, all the convulsions which 
have rendered our age so unlike any previous one, and produc- 
tive of so many calamities, private as well as public, have been 
almost exclusively confined to the middle classes, and should be 
considered only as a reaction of the simple bourgeoisie against 
the aristocratic class. Those agitations and convulsions are only 
the necessary consequence of the secular opposition, existing from 



DELTJSITE HOPES. 371 

the nintli and tentli centuries and those immediately following, 
between the strictly feudal nobility, which arrogated to itself all 
prerogatives and rights, and the more numerous class of burgh- 
ers, set on the lower step of the social ladder. These latter 
wanted, not so much to get up to the level of their superiors, as 
to bring them down to their own, and even precipitate them 
into the abyss of nothingness below. They have almost suc- 
ceeded ; and the prestige of noble blood has passed away, per- 
haps forever, in spite of Vico's well-known theory. JBut the now 
triumphant burgher in his turn sees the dim mass, lost in the 
darkness and indistinctness of the lowest pool of humanity, 
rising up grim and horrible out of the abyss, hungry and fierce 
and not to be pacified, to threaten the new-modelled aristocracy 
of money with a worse fate than that it inflicted upon the old 
nobility. 

And, to render the prospect more appalling, the chief means 
which so eminently aided the hourgeoisie to take their position, 
namely, the wide-spread influence of secret societies, whose 
workings even lately have astonished the world by the facile and 
apparently inexplicable revolutions effected in a few days, are 
now in the full possession of the lower classes, who, no longer 
rude and unintelligent, but possessed of leaders of experience and 
knowledge, can also powerfully work those mighty engines of 
destruction. 

In the presence of those past, present, and coming revolu- 
tions, the face of heaven entirely clouded, the presence of God 
absolutely ignored, his rights over mankind denied, the designs 
of his Providence openly derided, and man, pretending to decide 
his own destiny by his own unaided efforts, scornfully rejecting 
any obligation to a superior power, not looking on high for assist- 
ance, but taking only for his guide his pretended wisdom, his un- 
bounded pride, and his raging passions ; such is now our world. 

Is Ireland to launch herself on that surging sea of wild im- 
pulse, in whose depths lies destruction and whose waves never 
Idss a peaceful coast ? When she claimed and exercised a policy 
of her own, she wisely persisted in not mixing herself up with 
the troubles of Europe, content to enjoy happiness in her own 
way, on her ocean-bound island, she thanked God that no portion 
of her little territory touched any part of the Continent of 
Europe, stretching out vainly toward her shores. So she stood 
when, under God, she was mistress of her own destiny. If ever 
she thought of Europe, it was .only to send her missionaries to 
its help, or to receive foreign youth in her large schools which 
were open to all, where wisdom was imparted without restriction 
and without price. But to follow the lead of European theorists 
and vendors of so-called wisdom and science, to originate new 
schemes of pretended knowledge, or place herself in the wake of 



372 DELUSIVE HOPES. 

bold adventurers on the sea of modern inventions, she was ever 
steadfast in her refusal. 

And now that her autonomy is almost onCe again within her 
grasp, now that she can carve out a destiny of her own, would 
she hand over the guidance of herself to men who know nothing 
of her, who have only heard of her through the reports of her 
enemies, and who will scarcely look at her if she is foolish 
enough to ask to be admitted within their ranks ? 

Every one who wishes well to Ireland ought to thank God 
that so far few indeed, if any, of her children have ever joined 
in the plots and conspiracies of modern times, and that in this 
last scheme just referred to, not one of them, probably, has fully 
engaged himself. In the late horrors of the Paris Commune, no 
Irish name could be shown to have been implicated, and, when 
the contrary was asserted, a simple denial was sufficient to set 
the question at rest. Let them so continue to refrain from 
sullying their national honor by following the lead of men with 
whom they have nothing in common. 

After all, the great thing which the Irish desire is, with the 
entire possession of their rights, to enjoy that peace and security 
in their own island, which they relish so keenly when they find 
it on foreign shores. But no peace or security is possible with 
the attempt to subvert all human society by wild and imprac- 
ticable theories, in which human and divine laws are alike set 
at naught. Further words are unnecessary on this subject, as 
the simple good sense and deep religious feeling of the Irish will 
easily preserve them from yielding to such temptation. 

Yet, a last consideration seems worthy of note. "When, later 
on, we present our views, and explain by what means we con- 
sider that the happiness of the Irish nation may be secured, and 
its mission fulfilled, a more fitting opportunity will be presented 
of speaking of the ways by which Providence has already led 
them through former difficulties, and the consideration of those 
holy designs and past favors may enable us better to understand 
what may be hoped and attempted in the future. 

Here it is enough to observe that, in whatever progress the 
Irish have made of late in obtaining a certain amount of their 
rights, insurrection, revolution, plots, and the working of secret 
societies condemned by the Church, have absolutely gone for 
nothing, and the little of it all, in which Irishmen have indulged, 
really formed one of the main obstacles to the enjoyment of what 
they had already obtained, and to the securing of a greater 
amount for the future. 

There is no doubt that revolutions abroad and dangers at 
home have been the greatest inducements to England to relax 
her grasp and change her tyrannical policy toward Ireland. The 
success of the revolt of the ITorth American colonies was the 



DELUSIVE HOPES. 373 

main cause of the volunteer movement of 1Y82, and of the con- 
cessions then temporarily granted. The fearful upheaval of rev- 
olutionary France, which filled the English heart with a whole- 
some dread, was also a great means of obtaining for Ireland the 
concession of being no longer treated as though it were a lair of 
wild beasts or a nest of outlaws. The act of Catholic Eman- 
cipation in 1829 was certainly granted in view of immediate 
revolutions ready to burst forth, one of which did explode in 
France in the year following. But, in all those outbursts of 
popular fury, Ireland never joined ; and if she found in them 
new ground for hope, if she awaited anxiously the anticipated 
result turning in her favor, she never took any active part what- 
ever in them. She only relied on God, who always knows how 
to draw good from evil ; she, however, profited by them, and saw 
her shackles fall off of themselves, and herself brought back, 
step by step, to liberty. 

But so soon as any body of Irishmen entered into a scheme 
of a similar nature, imitating the secret plottings and deeds of 
European revolutionists, Ireland never gained a single inch of 
ground, nor reaped the slightest advantage from such attempts. 
On the contrary, ridicule, contempt, increase of burdens, penal- 
ties, and harsh treatment, were the only result which ever came 
from them, and, worst of all, no one pitied the victims of all 
those foolish enterprises. There is no need of entering here into 
details. The first of those attempts failed long ago ; the last is 
still on record, and cannot be yet said to belong to past history. 



CHAPTER XIY. 



EESTJEEECTION. 



To tlie eye of a keen beholder, Ireland to-day presents tlie 
appearance of a nation entering upon a new career. She is 
emerging from a long darkness, and opening again to the free 
light of heaven. "Whoever compares her present position with 
that she occupied a century ago, cannot fail to he struck with won- 
der no less at the change in her than at the agencies which brought 
that change about. And when to this is added the further re- 
flection that she is still young, though sprung from so old an 
origin — ^young in feeling, in buoyancy, in aspirations, in purity 
and simplicity — the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that a 
high destiny is in store for her, and that God proposes a long era 
of prosperity and active life to an ancient nation which is only 
now beginning to live. 

In such cases, whether it be a people or an individual, which 
is entering upon its life, crowds of advisers are ever to be found 
ready to display their wisdom and lay down the plans whose 
adoption will infallibly bring prosperity and happiness to the in- 
dividual or people in question. 

Ireland, to-day, suffers from no lack of wise counsellors and 
ardent well-wishers. Unfortunately, their various projects do 
not always harmonize ; indeed, they are sometimes contradictory, 
and, as their number is by no means small, the only difliculty is 
where to choose which road the nation should take in order to 
march in the right direction. 

In entering upon this portion of our work, where we have to 
deal with actual questions of the day, and if not to draw the 
horosco]3e of the future, at least to give utterance to our ideas for 
the promotion of the welfare of the nation, we shall appear to 
come imder the same catalogue of advisers, fully persuaded, with 
the rest, that our advice is the right, our voice the only one 
worthy of attention. 

Our purpose is far huriibler ; our reflections take another 
shape ; we merely say : 



EMIGRATION. 3^5 

During the last hundred years, Ireland lias changed wonder- 
ftilly for the better ; and although the old wounds are not yet quite 
healed up, though they stilly smart, though she is still poor and 
disconsolate, and her trials and afflictions far from being ended ; 
nevertheless, though sorely tried, Providence, has been kind to 
her. Many of her rights have been restored, and she is no longer 
the slave of hard task-masters. When she now speaks, her voice 
is no longer met by gibe and sneer, but with a kind of awe akin 
to respect, her enemies seeming to feel instinctively that it is the 
voice of a nation which no longer may be safely despised. 

This fact being indisputable, the conviction forces itself upon 
us that her improved condition is mainly, perhaps solely, due to 
Providence ; and that the career upon which she has entered, 
and which she is now pursuing with a clear determination of her 
own, has been marked out, designed, and already partially run, 
under the guidance of that God for whom alone she has suffered, 
and who never fails in his own good time to dry up the tears 
shed for his sake, and crown his martyrs with victory. 

Our task is merely to examine the progress made, the manner 
of its making, the direction toward which it tends, with the aim, 
if possible, of adding to its speed. We have no new plan to 
offer, no gratuitous advice to give. The plan is already sketched 
out — God has sketched it ; and our only aim is to see how man 
may cooperate with designs far higher than any proposed by 
human wisdom. 

The first thing that strikes us, standing on the verge of this 
new region, opening out dimly but gloriously before our eyes, is 
one great fact which is plain to all ; which is greater than all 
England's concessions to Ireland, more fruitful of happy conse- 
quences, not alone to the latter country itself, but to the world 
at large ; a fact which is the strongest proof of the vitality of the 
Irish race, which now begins to win for it respect by bringing 
forth its real strength, a strength to astonish the world ; which 
began feebly when the evils of the country were at their height, 
but has gone on constantly increasing until it has now grown to 
extraordinary proportions ; and which instead of, as their enemies 
fondly supposed, wresting Ireland from the Irish, has made their 
claim to the native soil securer than ever, by spreading strong 
supporters of their rights through the world. This great fact is 
emigration. 

At this moment, Irishmen are scattered abroad over the earth. 
In many regions they have numbers, and form compact bodies. 
Wherever this occurs, they acquire a real power in the land 
which they have made their new home. That power is certainly 
intended by Almighty God to be used wisely, prudently, but ac- 
tively and energetically, not only for the good of those who have 
been thus transplanted in a new soil, but also for the good of the 



376 EMIGRATION". 

mother-country which they cannot, if they would, forget. How 
can they utilize for such a purpose the power so recently acquired, 
the wealth, the influence, the consideration they enjoy, in their 
new country ? How may such a course benefit the land of their 
nativity as of their origin? These are important questions; 
they are not airy theories, but rise up clearly from a standing 
and stupendous fact. The turning their power of expansion to 
its right use, the reproduction with Christian aim of that old 
power of expansion peculiar to the Celtic race three thousand 
years ago, is what we call the first true issue of the Irish ques- 
tion : — Emigration and its Possille Effects. 

In order to Judge with proper understanding of the prospec- 
tive effects of Irish emigration, it is fitting to study the fact in 
ail its bearings ; to examine the origin and various phases of the 
mighty movement, the religious direction it has invariably taken, 
the immediate good it has produced, and the special considera- 
tion of the vast proportions which it has finally assumed. The 
task may be a long one ; but it is certainly important and inter- 
esting ; and it is only after the details of it have been thoroughly 
sifted that one may be in a position to judge rightly of the aid it 
has already furnished, and which it is destined to furnish in a 
still greater degree, to the uprising of the nation. 

The movement originated with the Reformation. It began 
with the flight of a few of the nobility in the reign of Henry 
VIII. ; their number was increased under Elizabeth, and grew 
to larger proportions still under James I. ; but a far greater 
number, sufficient to make a very sensible diminution in the 
population of the country, was doomed to exile by Cromwell 
and the Long Parliament. It then became a compulsory banish- 
ment. 

The next following movement on a large scale occurred after 
the surrender of Kilkenny, when the Irish commanders. Colonel 
Fitzpatrick, Clanricard, and others, could obtain no better terms 
than emigration to any foreign country then at peace with Eng- 
land. The Irish troops were eagerly caught up by the various 
European monarchs, so highly were their services esteemed. The 
number that thus left their native land, many of them never to 
return, amounted, according to well-informed writers, to forty 
thousand men, of noble blood most of them, many of the first 
nobility of the land, and almost all children of the old race. The 
details of this first exodus are to be found in the pages of many 
modern authors, particularly in Mr. Prendergast's " Cromwellian 
Settlement." 

The example thus given was followed on many occasions. 
The Treaty of Limerick, October 3, 1691, gave the garrison 
under Saarsfield liberty to join the army of King William or enter 
the service of France. Mr. A. M. O'Sullivan has given a spirited 



EMIGKATIOF. 377 

sketch, of the making of their choice by the heroic garrison as it 
defiled out of the city : 

" On the morning of the 5 th of October the Irish, regiments 
were to make their choice between exile for life or service in the 
armies of their conqueror. At each end of a gently-rising 
ground beyond the suburbs were planted on one side the royal 
standard of Trance, and on the other that of England. It was 
agreed that the regiments, as they marcbed out with all the 
honors of war, drums beating, colors flying, and matches lighted, 
should, on reaching the spot, wheel to the left or to the right, 
beneath that flag under which they elected to serve. At the 
head of the Irish marched the Foot Guards, the finest regiment 
in the service, fourteen hundred strong. All eyes were fixed on 
this splendid body of men. On they came, amid breathless 
silence and acute suspense ; for well both the English and Irish 
generals knew that the choice of the first regiment would power- 
tully influence all the rest. The Guards marched up to the 
critical spot, and in a body wheeled to the colors of France, 
barely seven men turning to the English side ! Ginckle, we are 
told, was greatly agitated as he witnessed the proceeding. The 
next regiment, however (Lord Iveagh's), marched as unanimously 
to the vVilliamite banner, as did also portions of two others. 
But the bulk of the Irish army defiled under the fieur-de-lys of 
King Louis, only one thousand and forty-six, out of nearly four- 
teen thousand men, preferring the service of England." 

From that time out a large number of the Irish nobility and 
gentry continued to enlist under French, Spanish, or Austrian 
colors ; and the several Irish brigades became celebrated all over 
Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. It is said by 
Vahl)6 McGeohegan that six hundred thousand Irishmen perished 
in the armies of France alone. The abbe is generally very ac- 
curate, and from his long residence in France had every means 
at his disposal of arriving at the truth. Some pretend that 
double the number enlisted in foreign service. There is no 
doubt that in all a million men left the island to take service 
under the banners of Catholic sovereigns, and it is needless to 
dwell on the bravery and devotion of those men whom the per- 
secution of an unwise and cruel Protestant government drove 
out of Ireland during the eighteenth century — it is needless to 
dwell upon it, for the record is known to the world. 

"Without following the fortunes of the Irish brigades, the 
history of one of which, that in the service of France, has been 
given us in the very interesting and valuable narrative of John 
C. O'Callaghan — its various fortunes and final dissolution at 
the breaking out of the French republic, when the English Gov- 
ernment was glad to receive back the scattered remnants of it — 
the question which bears most on our present subject is : "What 



378 EMIGEATIOK 

was the occupation of those Irislimen on the Continent when not 
actually engaged in war ? What' service did their voluntary or 
compulsory exile do their native country ? "Was that long emi- 
gration of a century productive of something out of which Provi- 
dence may have drawn good ? 

The first departure of a few under Hugh O'Neill and Hugh 
O'Donnell had already spread the name of Ireland through 
Spain, Italy, and Belgium. The reports of the numerous Eng- 
lish spies, employed to dog their steps and watch their move- 
ments, reports some of which have been finally brought to light, 
conclusively prove that most of .the exiles held honorable posi- 
tions in Spain and Portugal, at Yalladolid and Lisbon, where the 
O'Sullivans and O'Driscolls lived ; at the very court of Spain, or 
in the Spanish navy, like the Bourkes and the Cavanaghs. 

In Planders, under the Austrian archdukes, were stationed 
the McShanes, on the Groyne ; the Daniells at Antwerp ; the 
posterity of the earls themselves with that of their former reti- 
nue. AH held rank in the Austrian army, and even in times of 
peace were occupied in thinking of possible entanglements where- 
by they might serve their country, while they made the Irish 
name honored and respected all over that rich land. In Italy, at 
JS^aples, Leghorn, Florence, and Pome, in the great centres of 
the peninsula, the same thing was taldng place, and there, at 
least, the calumnies, everywhere so industriously circulated about 
Ireland, could not penetrate, or, if they did, only to be received 
with scorn. 

But, when the next emigration, at the end of the Cromwell- 
ian and Williamite wars, landed forty thousand soldiers, and 
twelve thousand more a few 3'ears afterward, on the European 
Continent, these armed men proved to the nations, by their 
bravery, their deep attachment to their religion, their perfect 
honor and generosity, that the people from which a persecuting 
power had driven them forth could not be composed of the 
outlaws and blood-thirsty cutthroats which the reports of their 
enemies would make them. How striking and permanent must 
have been the effect produced on impartial minds by the con- 
trast between the aspect of the reality and the base fabrications 
of skihully-scattered rumor ! 

And be it borne" in mind that those men founded families 
in the countries where they settled, as well as those who con- 
tinued to flock thither during the whole of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. They carried about with them, in their very persons even, 
the history of Ireland's wrongs ; and the mere sight of them was 
enough to interest all with whom they came in contact in favor of 
their country. Hence the esteem and sympathy which Ireland and 
her people have always met with in Erance, where the calumnies 
and ridicule lavished on them could never find an entrance. 



EMIGRATIOK 379 

It would be a great error to imagine tliat tliey were to 
be found only in the camp or in the garrisons of cities. They 
made themselves a home in their new country, and their chil- 
dren entered upon all the walks of life opened up to the citi- 
zens of the country in which they resided. Thus, at least, the 
name of Ireland did not die out altogether during that age 
of gloom, when their native isle was only the prison of the 
race, where it was chained down in abject misery, out of the 
sight of the world, the life of it stifled out in the deep dungeon 
of oblivion. 

In all honorable professions they became distinguished — in 
the Church and in trade, as in the army. Thus, speaking only of 
France, an Irishman — Edgeworth — ^was chosen by Louis XYI. 
to prepare him for death and stand by him during his last ordeal 
of ignominy ; another — Lally ToUendal — ^would have wrested 
India from England, if his ardent temperament had not brought 
him enemies where he ought to have met with friends ; another 
yet — ^Walsh — during the American War, employed the wealth 
acquired by trade, in sending cruisers against the English to 
American waters. 

It would take long pages to record what those noble exiles 
accomplished for the good of their country and religion, quite 
apart from the heroism they displayed on battle-fields, and their 
fidelity to principle during times of peace. Their very presence 
in foreign countries was, perhaps,' the best protest against the 
enslavement of their own. They showed by their bearing that 
they owed no allegiance to England, and that brute force could 
never establish right. By identifying themselves with the 
nations which ofi"ered them hospitality and a new right of citi- 
zenship, they proved to the world that their native isle could be 
governed by native citizens. Their honorable conduct and suc- 
cessful activity in every pursuit of life showed that, as they were 
capable of governing themselves, so likewise could they claim 
self-government for their country. 

The moral condition of France during the eighteenth century, 
and the depths of corruption into which the higher class sank in 
so short a time, are known to all. To the honor of the Irish nobil- 
ity and gentry then in France, not a single Irish name is to be met 
with in that long list of noble names which have disgraced that 
page of French history. ]^ot in the luxurious bowers and pal- 
aces of Louis XY. were they to be found, but on the battle-fields 
of Dettingen and Fontenoy. It was a Scotchman — Law — ^who 
infected the higher circles of the natives with the rage for specu- 
lation, and the folly of gambling in paper. It was an Italian — 
Cagliostro — who traded on the superstitious credulity of men 
who had lost their faith. It was an Englishman — Lord Derwent- 
water — and another Scotchman — Eamsay — who, by the introduc- 



380 EMIGEATION. 

tion of the first Masonic Lodge into France, opened tlie flood- 
gates of future revolutions. 

Among those of foreign birth, no Irishman was found in 
France to contribute to the corruption of the nation, and give 
his aid to set agoing that long era of woe not yet ended. 

And needless is it to add that never is one of them mentioned, 
among those who were so active in propagating that broad in- 
fidelity peculiar to that age. If a few of them shared to some 
extent in the general delusion, and took part with the vast mul- 
titude in the insane derision, then so fashionable, of every thing 
holy, their number was small indeed, and none of them acquired 
in that peculiar line the celebrity which crowned so many others 
— the Grimms, the Gallianis, and later on the Paines, the Cloots, 
and other foreigners. 

As a body, the Irish remained faithful to the Church of their 
fathers, honoring her by their conduct, and their respectful de- 
meanor toward holy names and holy things. Eventually they, 
in common with all Frenchmen, had to share in the misfortunes 
brought on by the subversion of all the former guiding princi- 
ples ; but, though sharing in the punishment, they took no part 
in the great causes which called it down. 

These few words will suffice for the emigration of the Irish 
nobility, and its eflfects on foreign countries, as well as Ireland it- 
self. 

But another class of noblemen had emigrated to the Continent 
side by side with those of whom we have just spoken ; namely, 
bishops, priests, monks, and learned men. England would not 
suffer the Catholic clergy in Ireland ; she was particularly care- 
ful not to allow Irish youth the benefit of any but a Protestant 
education. Irish clergymen were compelled to fly and open 
houses of study abroad. Their various colleges in Spain, France, 
Belgium, and Italy, are well known ; they have already been re- 
ferred to, and it is not necessary to enlarge on the subject. But, 
though mention has been made of the renown thus acquired by 
Irishmen then residing on the Continent, it is fitting to speak of 
them again in their character of emigrants. 

They took upon themselves the noble task of making the 
literature and the history of their nation known to all people ; 
and in so doing they have preserved a rich literature which must 
otherwise have perished. 

What was their situation on the Continent ? They had been 
driven by persecution from their country, sometimes in troops 
of exiles to be cast on some remote shore ; sometimes escaping 
singly and in disguise, they went out alone to end their lives 
under a foreign sky. Behind them they left the desolate island ; 
their friends bowed down in misery, their enemies triumphant 
and in full power. The convents, where they had spent their 



EMIGEATIOK 381 

happiest days, were eitlier demolished or turned to vile uses ; 
their churches desecrated ; heresy ruling the land, truth com- 
pelled to be silent. All the harrowing details given by the 
" Prophet of Lamentations " might be applied to their beloved 
country. 

True, they could find peace and rest among those who 
offered them their hospitality ; at least, the worship of God 
would be free and untrammelled there. But it was not the place 
of their birth, where they had received their first education ; it 
was not the mission intrusted to them when they consecrated 
their lives to God. They would hear another language, see 
around them different manners, begin life anew, perhaps, in their 
old age. What a contrast to their former hopes ! What a sad 
ending to the closing days of their life ! 

Nevertheless, they might be of use to their countrymen. It 
was not for them now to convert Europe, and preach Christianity 
to barbarous tribes, as did their ancestors of old. The world 
which received them was languishing with excess of refined civil- 
ization ; corruption had entered in, and was fast destroying it ; 
and they could scarcely hope to hold it back from its downward 
career. But, at least, they might open houses for the reception 
of the youth of their own country, where they should receive an 
education according to the teachings of the true Church, which 
was denied them at home. So they went to Salamanca, to Yal- 
ladolid, to Paris, Louvain, Douai, Rheims, Eome, wherever there 
was hope or possibility of directing Irish youth in the ways of 
true piety and learning. 

The labors to which they- devoted themselves, though un- 
known to posterity, were of great utility at the time. They saw 
the youth they educated grow up under their care ; when their 
studies were concluded, they sent them to labor in the ministry 
among their countrymen ; they heard of them from time to time 
— of their arduous life, the dangers they braved, the many per- 
secutions they underwent, their imprisonment when captured, 
their conviction, torture often, and death by martyrdom. And 
thus, through the exertions of those emigrant monks and priests, 
the true Gospel was preached in Ireland, and the faith of the 
people kept alive and strong. 

A few of them chose another path, and consecrated the re- 
mainder of their days to literary labors, which have shed down 
on their persecuted country a halo of immortal glory. 

Some Pranciscan friars (two of them the brothers O'Cleary) 
had already begun this work in the island itself, when driven 
from their quiet homes to take refuge in the obscure " convents," 
that is, out-of-the-way farm-houses mentioned before, where they 
were received and hidden away from the world. The literature 
of Ireland was fast perishing ; the rage of their enemies being 



382 EMIGEATIOK 

as violently directed against their books as against their houses 
and churches. Precious manuscripts were every day given to 
the flames and wantonly destroyed, seemingly for the mere pleas- 
ure of destruction. A very few years would have sufficed to 
render the former history of the country a perfect blank. In no 
spot of the same size on earth had so many interesting books 
ever been written and treasured up ; but before long there would 
remain no friars on the island to preserve them, no library to 
contain them, no one to care for them in the least. The brothers 
O'Cleary saw this with dismay ; and they, with two companions, 
became known as the " Four Masters." They interested in 
their work the faithful Irish who still retained possession of a 
farm, or a cabin with a few acres of ground attached ; the men, 
and women even, were to search the country round for every 
volume concealed or preserved, for every parchment and relic, 
for vellum manuscripts, even a stray solitary page, did one re- 
main alone. The annals of Ireland were thus saved by the 
literary patriotism of poor and unknown peasants. All that re- 
mains of Irish lore was collected together in the rural convent 
of the O'Olearys, and an ardent flame was enkindled which 
lasted the whole of the seventeenth century. 

To this initiative must be referred the subsequent labors of 
Ward, Colgan, Lynch, and others ; herculean labors truly, which 
have enabled antiquarians of our days to resume the thread, so 
near being snapped, of that long and tangled web of history 
wherein is woven all that can interest the patriot and the Chris- 
tian of the island. 

Knowing the position in which the writers found themselves, 
it is astonishing to see what they wrote. It was not a work of 
fancy to which their pens were devoted. A strong, feeling heart 
and an active imagination were certainly theirs ; but of little 
service could either prove to them in the ungrateful task of col- 
lecting manuscripts, classifying, reading them through, ascertain- 
ing their age and authenticity, and Anally using them for the pur- 
pose of preserving the annals and hagiography of the nation. 

The large libraries they found in the various cities which re- 
ceived them could be of little use to them. They had first to 
collect their own libraries, to summon their authorities from dis- 
tant lands ; many books were to be procured from Ireland itself. 
With what precautions ! It was real, (though lawful) smuggling; 
for the export of Irish books was not only under tarift', but strict- 
ly prohibited ; the mere sight of them was more hateful to a 
British custom-house officer of those days than the sight of a 
crucifix to a Japanese official of ]S"agasaki. It would be inter- 
esting to know the various stratagems devised to conceal them, 
carry them away, and convey them triumphantly to Louvain, 
Paris, or Rome. 



EMIGRATION. 383 

But Ireland was not tlie only repository of Irish books. 
Many letters, official documents, copies of old MSS., interesting- 
relics of antiquity, had been gathered ages before and during all 
the intervening time, in convents, churches, houses of education, 
on the Continent, along the Rhine chiefly. It is said that even 
to-day the richest mines of yet unexplored lore of this character 
are scattered along both sides of the great German river. The 
frequent movements of various armies, the sieges of cities, the 
horrors of war which have raged there constantly from the days 
of Arminius and Yarro down, have not destroyed every thing, 
could not exhaust the rich deposit of Irish manuscripts there 
concealed. But the labor of striking the mine ! — of opening 
those musty pages falling to pieces between the fingers and leav- 
ing in the hand nothing but illegible fragments of half-blackened 
parchment ; and the further labor of deciphering them, of dis- 
covering what they speak about, and if they are likely to prove 
useful to the purpose ! 

It is needless to descant on such a theme. It is impossible 
to give any true idea of the literary labors of those nien, without 
having seen and perused their huge folios, many of which have 
not yet been published to the world. Poor Colgan could give 
us little more than his '■'^ Trias Thawnaturga" and that was 
only destined to form the portal of the edifice he purposed erect- 
ing as a shrine to the memory of the whole host of saints nurt- 
ured in the island — the ^^ Acta Sanctorum Hibernim.'''' 

The grand idea, which first germinated in the minds of those 
men, expanded afterward in others under circumstances more 
favorable. Did they not suggest to Bollandus and his fellows 
the thought whose realization has immortalized them ? 

In tasks such as these were the Irish emigrant monks of the 
time employed. 

There was yet another class of involuntary Irish exiles : 
those shipped to the " plantations " of, America, to the " tobac- 
co" and "sugar" islands, to Yirginia and Jamaica, but princi- 
pally to the Barbadoes. The origin of this new kind of emigra- 
tion, already touched upon, is worthy of the times and of the 
men who called it forth. 

After forty thousand soldiers had been allowed, or rather 
compelled, by Cromwell to enlist in foreign armies, it was found 
that many had left behind them their wives and children. What 
was to be done with these " widows " whose husbands and nu- 
merous offspring were still living ? They could not be sent to 
Connaught, as women, with children only, could not be ex- 
pected to " plant " that desolate province ; they could not be 
allowed to remain in their native place, as the decree had gone 
forth that all the Irish were to " transplant " or be transported ; 
it would have been inconvenient and inexcusable to do what had 



384 EMIGRATION 

been so often done in the war — massacre them in cold blood — as 
the war was over. 

To relieve the government of this difficulty, Bristol mer- 
chants, and merchants probably from other English cities, trad- 
ing with the new British colonies of North America, thought it 
a providential opening for a great profit to accrue to the souls 
of the benighted Irish women and children, and likely at the 
same time to add something to their own purses and those of 
their friends, the West India planters. 

It was only under Elizabeth that permanent colonies were 
sent out from England to the continent and islands of the I^ew 
World. The Cavaliers of Yirginia are as well known in the 
South as the Puritans of 'New England in the North. This last 
colony dated only from the time of the Stuart dynasty. The 
great question for all those transatlantic establishments was that 
of labor ; but in the South it was more difficult of solution than 
in the North, where Europeans could work in the fields, a thing 
scarcely possible in the tropics. The natives, as we know, were 
first employed in the South by the Spaniards, and soon suc- 
cumbed to the demands of European rapacity. 

In the West Indies, natives of two different races existed : 
the soft and delicate Indian of Hayti and Cuba, and the fero- 
cious Caribs of many other islands. The first race soon disap- 
peared ; the other continued refractory, indomitable, choosing to 
perish rather than labor ; and some remnants of it still remain, 
saved by the Catholic Church. As yet, African negroes had not 
been conveyed there in sufficient numbers. 

A brilliant thought struck the minds, at once pious, active, 
and business-like, of those above-mentioned Bristol merchants — a 
thought which was the doom of thousands of- Irish women and 
children. 

The names of a few of those Bristol firms deserve to be 
handed down. Those of Messrs. James Sellick and Leader, Mr. 
Robert Yeomans, Mr. Joseph Lawrence, Dudley North, and 
John Johnson, are furnished by Mr. Prendergast, who tells us 
that — 

" The Commissioners of Ireland under Cromwell gave them 
orders upon the governors of garrisons to deliver them prisoners 
of war. . . . upon masters of work-houses, to hand over to them 
the destitute under their care, ' who were of an age to labor,' 
or, if women, those 'who were marriageable, and not past 
breeding ; ' and gave directions to all in authority, to seize those 
who had no visible means of livelihood, and deliver them to 
these agents of the Bristol merchants; in execution of which 
latter directions, Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every 
part like the slave-hunts in Africa." 

A contract was signed on September 14, 1653, by the Com- 



EMIGRATION". S'SS 

missioiiers of Ireland and Messrs. Selliek and Leader, " to supply 
them (the merchants) with two hundred and fifty women of the 
Irish nation, above twelve years and under the age of forty-five." 

The fate reserved for the human cattle, as they must have 
been looked upon by the godly gentlemen who bartered over 
them, may be well imagined. It is calculated that, in four years, 
those English firms of slave-dealers had shipped six thousand 
and four hundred Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to 
the British colonies of ISTorth America. 

The age requisite for the females who were thus ship]3ed off 
may be noted ; the boys and men were not to be under twelve 
or over fifty. These latter were condemned to the task of tilling 
the soil in a climate where the negro only can work and live. 
As all the cost to their masters was summed up in the expense 
of transportation, they were not induced to spare them, even 
by the consideration of the high price which, it is said, caused 
the modern slave-owners of America to treat their slaves with 
what might be called a commercial humanity. It is easy to 
imagine, then, the life led by so many young men forced to 
work in the open fields, under a tropical sun. How long that life 
lasted, we do not know ; as their masters, on whom they entire- 
ly depended, were interested in keeping the knowledge of their 
fate a secret. It is well understood that, when the unfortunate 
victims had once left the Irish harbor from which they set sail, 
no one ever heard of them again ; and, if the parents still lived 
in the old country, they were left to their conjectures as to the 
probable situation of their children in the new. 

Sir William Petty says that " of boys and girls alone " — ex- 
clusive, consequently, of men and women — " six thousand were 
thus transplanted ; but the total number of Irish sent to perish 
in the tobacco-islands, as they were called, was estimated in some 
Irish accounts at one hundred thousand." 

The " Irish accounts " may have been exaggerated, but the 
English atoned for this by certainly falling below the mark, as is 
clear from the fact that, according to them, the Commissioners 
of Ireland required the " supply " for JSTew England alone to 
come from " the country within twenty miles of Cork, Youghall, 
Kinsale, Waterford, and "Wexford ; " that " the hunt lasted four 
years," and was carried on with such ardor by the agents of 
many English firms that those men-catchers employed persons 
" to delude poor people by false pretenses into by-places, and 
thence they forced them on board their ships ; that for money 
sake they were found to have enticed and forced women from 
their husbands, and children from their parents, who maintained 
them at school ; and they had not only dealt so with the Irish, 
but also with the English." For this reason, the order was 
revoked, and the " hunt " forbidden. 
25 



386 EMIGEATIOK 

"When agents were reduced to sucli straits after the govern- 
ment had used force, as Henry Cromwell acknowledged, the 
large extent of country mentioned above must have been well 
scoured and depopulated ; and certainly a far greater number of 
victims must have been secured by all those means combined 
than is given in the English accounts. We believe the Irish. 

One other source of supply deserves mention. iJ^ot only 
women and children, but priests also, were hunted down and 
shipped off to the same American plantations ; so that persons 
of every class which is held sacred in the eyes of God and man 
for its character and helplessness, were compelled to emigrate, 
or rather to undergo the worst possible fate that the imagination 
of man can conceive. 

In 1656 a general 'battue for priests took place all over Ire- 
land. The prisons seem to have been filled to overflowing. 
" On the 3d of May, the governors of the respective precincts 
were ordered to send them with sufficient guards, from garrison 
to garrison, to Carrickfergus, to be there put on board of such 
ships as should sail with the first opportunity to the Barbadoes. 
One may imagine the sufferings of this toilsome journey by the 
petition of one of them. Paul Cashin, an aged priest, appre- 
hended at Maryborough, and sent to Philipstown, on the way to 
Carrickfergus, there fell desperately sick ; and, being also ex- 
tremely aged, was in danger of perishing in restraint from want 
of friends and means of relief. On the 27tli of August, the com- 
missioners having ascertained the truth of his petition, they or- 
dered him sixpence a day during his sickness, and (in answer, 
probably, to this poor prisoner's prayer to be saved from trans- 
plantation) their order directed that the sixpence should be con- 
tinued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) to Carrick- 
fergus, in order to his transplantation to the Barbadoes." — 
( Cromwellian Settlement.) 

In that burning island of the "West Indies, deprived of all 
means, not only of exercising their ministry among others, but 
even of practising their religion themselves, of fulfilling their 
holy obligation of prayer and sacrifice, these victims of such an 
atrocious persecution were employed as laborers in the fields : 
their transplantation had cost money, and the money had to be 
rej)aid a hundred-fold by the sweat of their hrow. 

Ship-loads of them had been discharged on the inhospitable 
shore of that island ; each with a high calling which he could no 
longer carry out ; each, therefore, tortured in his soul, with all 
the sweet or bitter memories of his past life crowding on his 
mind, and the dreary prospect spreading before him, to the end 
of his life, of no change from his rude and slavish occupation un- 
der the burning sun, hearing no voice but that of the harsh task- 
master ; his eyes saddened and his heart sickened by the open 



EMIGEATIOK 387 

and daily spectacle of immorality and woe, with no ending bnt 
the grave. 

It seems, however, that these holy men found some means of 
fnliilling their sacred duty as God's ministers, for the inhuman 
traffic in such slaves as these to the Barbadoes lasted but one 
year. In 1657 it was decreed that this island should no longer 
be their place of transportation, but, instead, the desolate isles 
of Arran, opposite the entrance to the bay of Galway, and the 
isle of Innisboffin, off the coast of Connemara. Mr. Prendergast 
thinks that this change of policy in their regard may have been 
caused by the price of their transportation, which probably 
mounted to a high aggregate sum. But he must be mistaken. 
They certainly cost no more than women and children, and their 
labor in the West Indies surely covered this expense. The rea- 
son for the change is more plainly visible in the nature of the 
site substituted for the Barbadoes as their place of exile. The 
" holy isles " of Arran and the isle of Innisboffin were then, as 
now, bare of every thing — almost of inhabitants. The priests 
could be there kept as in a prison, and, though they might be of 
no profit to their masters, they could not hear a voice or see a 
face other than those of their fellow-captives. In the West In- 
dia islands there existed an already thick population, and the 
very women and children who had been transported thither be- 
fore them would be consoled by their ministry, though prac- 
tised by stealth, and strengthened in their faith, which might 
thus have not only been kept alive among them, but spread over 
the whole country. 

Who can say if the faith, preserved among the many Irish 
living in the island until quite recently, was not owing to their 
exhortations ? 

" The first Irish people who found permanent homes in Amer- 
ica," says Thomas D'Arcy McGee, " were certain Catholic patri- \ 
ots banished by Oliver Cromwell to Barbadoes. ... In this \ 
island, as in the neighboring Montserrat, the Celtic language \ 
was certainly spoken in the last century,^ and perhaps it is part- i 
ly attributable to this early Irish colonization, that Barbadoes 
became ' one of the most populous islands in the world.' At the / 
end of the seventeenth century, it was reported to contain twen- 
ty thousand inhabitants." 

Although Barbadoes is the chief island concerned in the 
present considerations, nevertheless nearly all the British colo- 

' The Celtic language — that sure sign of Catholicity — was not only spoken there 
last century, but is still to-day. The writer himself heard last year (IS*?!), from two 
young American seamen, who had just returned from a voyage to this island, that the 
negro porters and white 'longshoremen who load and unload the ships in the harbor, 
know scarcely any other language than the Irish, so that often the crews of English 
vessels can only communicate with them by signs. 



388 EMIGRATION. 

nies then existing in America, , received their share of this 
emigration. Several ship-loads of the exiles were certainly sent 
to I^ew England, at the very time that ISTew-Englanders were 
earnestly invited by the British Government to " come and plant 
Ireland ; " Yirginia, too, paid probably with tobacco for the 
young men and maidens sent there as slaves. The " Thurloe 
State Papers " disclose the fact that one thousand boys and one 
thousand girls, taken in Ireland T)y force, were dispatched to 
Jamaica, lately added to the empire of England by Admiral 
Penn, father of the celebrated Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. 

Thus, then, began the first extensive emigration of the Irish 
to various parts of British America — a movement quite compul- 
sory, which in our days has become voluntary, and is productive 
of the wonders soon to claim our attention. 

The involuntary emigration of soldiers and clergymen to the 
Continent of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, #was, as has been seen, the cause of great advantages to 
Ireland, and became, in the designs of a merciful Providence, a 
powerful means of drawing good from evil. At first sight, it 
seems impossible to discover a similar advantage in this other 
most involuntary emigration to the plantations of America. 

A pagan has declared that " there is no spectacle more grate- 
ful to the eyes of God than a just man struggling with adversity ; " 
and where, except in the first ages of Christianity, could more 
innocent victims, and a more cruel persecution, be witnessed ? 

After the horrors of a civil war, horrors unjDaralleled perhaps 
in the annals of modern nations, the children and young people 
of both sexes are hunted down over an area of several Irish 
counties, dragged in crowds to the seaports, and there jammed 
in the holds of small, uncomfortable, slow-going vessels. What 
those children must have been may be easily imagined from the 
specimens of the race before us to-day. We do not speak of 
their beauty and comeliness of form, on which a Greek writer of 
the age of Pericles might have dilated, and found a subject 
worthy of his pen ; we speak of their moral beauty, their sim- 
plicity, purity, love of home, attachment to their family, and 
God, even in their tenderest age. We meet them scattered over 
the broad surface of this country — boys and girls of the same 
race, coming from the same counties, chiefly from sweet Wexford, 
the beautiful, calm, pious south of Ireland. Who but a monster 
could think of harming those pure and affectionate creatures, so 
modest, simple, and ready to trust and confide in every one they 
meet ? And what could be said of those maidens, now so well 
known in this ISTew World, of whom to speak is to praise, whom 
to see is to admire ? Such were the victims selected by the 
Bristol firms, by " Lord " Henry Cromwell, Governor-General of 
Ireland, or by Lord Thurloe, secretary and mouth-piece of the 



EMIGEATIQK 389 

" Protector." Thej were to be violently torn from their parents 
and friends, from every one they knew and loved, to be con- 
demned, after surviving the horrible ocean-passage of those days, 
the boys to work on sugar and tobacco plantations, the girls to 
lead a life of shame in the harems of Jamaica planters ! 

Such of them as were sent ISTorth, were to be distributed 
among the " saints " of ITew England, to be esteemed by the 
said "saints" as "idolaters," "vipers," "young reprobates," 
just objects of " the wrath of God ; " or, if appearing to fall in 
with their new and hard task-masters, to be greeted with words 
of dubious praise as "brands snatched from the burning," " ves- 
sels of reprobation," destined, perhaps, by a due imitation of 
the " saints," to become some day " vessels of election," in the 
mean time to be unmercifully scourged by both master and mis- 
tress with the " besom of righteousness " probably, at the slight- 
est fault or mistake. 

Such was the sorrowful prospect held out to them ; there was 
no possibility of escape, no hope of going back to the only coun- 
try they loved. In the South they soon, very soon, sank into an 
obscure grave. In the ISTorth a prolonged life was only a pro- 
longation of torment. For, who among them could ever think 
of becoming a " convert ? " They had been taken from their 
island-home when over twelve years of age ; they had already 
received from their mothers and hunted priests a religious educa- 
tion, which happily could never be effaced ; they were to bury 
in their hearts all their lives long the conviction of their holy 
faith, supported by the only hope they now had, the hope of 
heaven. 

Could the eyes of God, looking down over the earth, and 
marking in all places with deep pity his erring children, find 
souls more worthy of his vast paternal love ? Can we imagine 
that the ears of Heaven were deaf to their prayers poured out un- 
ceasingly all those long days and nights of trials and of tears ? 
Can we read in the designs of Providence the blessed decrees 
which such scenes called forth ? Blind that we are, unable often 
to judge rightly of our own thoughts, often an enigma to our- 
selves, how shall we dare to judge of what is so far above us ? 
'No Christian at least can pretend that all those miseries, accumu- 
lated on the heads of so many innocent victims, had no other 
object than to make them suffer. Ireland will yet profit by all 
the merits, unknown and untold, gained by so many thousand 
human hearts and souls and bodies given over to misfortunes 
which baf&e expression. 

And as yet we have said nothing of those cargoes of priests 
shipped from Carrickfergus to Barbadoes, and afterward to Arran 
and Innisboflin. Deprived of all means of making their new 
country in America a witness of Catholic prayer and worship — 



390 EMIGRATIOK 

not one of them probably being able to offer the holy sacrifice 
even for a single day, nor administer any sacrament unless per- 
haps that of penance — ^by stealth ; not one dared open his month 
and preach the truth publicly to all. "What could they do ? They 
offered the sacrifice of themselves ; the very sight of them pos- 
sessed almost the virtue of a sacrament, and their lives preached 
a sermon more eloquent than any of those which entrance the 
vastest audience of a solemn cathedral. 

ISTo ! the first emigration of the Irish to America was not un- 
fruitful in its results. . And were we to attribute the great prog- 
ress made by Catholicity on the American Continent in the 
present age to the merits of those numerous victims of persecu- 
tion, who could prove us to be in error, and say that between the 
sufferings of innocence in the seventeenth and the glorious suc- 
cess of their countrymen in the nineteenth century there is no 
connection ? The old phrase of Tertullian, ^^Sanguis martyrtim, 
semen Christianorum,,^'' has been proved true too often in the an- 
nals of the Catholic Church to be falsified in this one instance ; 
yet, if what our days witness be not the result of former suffer- 
ings and sacrifices, those trials were barren, and are consequently 
inexplicable. Every cause must have its effect ; and it is a truth 
which no Christian can hesitate to admit, that the most efficacious 
source of blessings is the tear of the innocent, the anguish of the 
pure of heart, the humble prayer of the persecuted servant of God. 

When we come to speak of the emigration of the race to the 
American Continent, which is now in progress, the stupendous 
facts which will make our narrative and excite our admiration 
must be regarded and accounted for from a religious and Catho- 
lic stand-point, and we shall then be able to refer to this first and 
apparently barren emigration. Many losses, spiritual as well as 
temporal, may stagger the unreflecting, particularly when the 
whole designs of Providence are as yet scarcely in their inceptive 
stage; but the more they are developed before our eyes, the 
more the truth is made clear ; every difficulty vanishes ; and the 
soul of the beholder exclaims " Yes, God is truly wise and mer- 
ciful ! » 

But it is time at last to enter on the consideration of what we 
esteem the first great issue involved in the resurrection of Ire- 
land, namely, all the probable consequences of the present emi- 
gration, which is the true point we are aiming at, as our purpose 
is to show the benefit that Ireland has already derived, and is 
sure to derive later on, from that incessant flow of the great 
human wave starting from her shore to oversweep vast continents 
and islands of the sea. What aid will it afford to her own res- 
urrection at home, in order to render that complete and lasting ? 
This may be said to have been our main object in writing these 
pages ; for, although it may be impressive enough for those who 



EMIGEATIOK 391 

regard the subject attentively, and althougli it will certainly he a 
source of wonder to those who come after us, nevertheless it fails 
to strike as it ought the great mass of beholders. 

Often in the history of nations, while the mightiest revolu- 
tions are in progress, they are scarcely perceptible to the actors in 
them ; all their circumstances, their most active and effective 
operations, being like the silent workings of N^ature, scarcely sen- 
sible to those around, until the end comes and the great result is 
achieved ; then history records the event as one fraught with the 
greatest blessings, or misfortunes, to mankind. So will it be, 
we have no doubt, with that strange concatenation of small 
domestic facts which now form the universal phenomenon of all 
English-speaking countries : the spread of the Irish everywhere. 

What were its beginnings? Nothing at all. "What good 
effects followed it ? ivTone perceptible for a long time. These 
two reflections claim our attention first, for we must study the 
phenomenon, in all its circumstances and bearings. 

■ This new emigration we call voluntary, to distinguish it from 
the first, which was forced upon large portions of the Irish race. 
But, in reality, the Irish undertook it at the beginning with reluc- 
tance ; the intolerable state of existence which they were com- 
pelled to undergo in their own land acting upon them with a 
kind of monal compulsion amounting to an almost irresistible 
force. For it was either the famine or persecution of the century 
preceding which first drove them to emigrate. 

I^ecessity of expansion is a great characteristic of their race, 
an instinctive impulse which three thousand years ago carried a 
part of it into the heart of Asia. But this particular branch had 
been rooted to the soil for so many centuries, by the stern neces- 
sity of repelling a series of successive invasions, that this great 
characteristic appeared for a long time to be totally extinct in it. 
They seemed neither to know nor care any more for foreign coun- 
tries ; and no race in Europe, from the ninth to the eighteenth 
century, showed itself so completely wedded to the soil, and in- 
capable of the thought of spreading abroad. 

At last they began to move. And what was the first origin 
of the new movement ? 'No one can say precisely. Only, in 
various accounts of occurrences taking place in the island during 
the last century, we occasionally meet with such entries as the 
following by Matthew O'Connor, in his " Irish Catholics : " 

" The summer of 1728 was fatal. The heart of the politician 
was steeled against the miseries of the Catholics ; their number 
excited his jealousy. Their decrease by the silent waste of fam- 
ine must have been a source of secret joy ; but the Protestant 
interest was declining in a proportionate degree by the ravages 
of starvation. . . 

" Thousands of Protestants took shipping in Belfast for the 



392 EMIGRATIOif. 

"West Indies. . . . The policy that would starve the Catholics 
at home would not deny them the privilege of flight." 

This is the first mention of emigration, on any extensive scale, 
which ,we could find in the records of last century ; and, at the 
time when the Protestant Irish went to America, where they 
doubtless met with congenial minds in the Puritans of New Eng- 
land, the Catholics still turned, as before, to Spain and France. 

But a new entry in 1Y62 unfolds a new aspect. This time 
Catholics alone are spoken of : " 'No resource remained to the 
peasantry but emigration. The few who had means sought an 
•asylum in the American plantations ; such as remained were al- 
lowed generally an acre of ground for the support of their fami- 
lies, and commonage for a cow,.but at rents the most exorbitant." 

This is the first instance we meet with of Irish Catholics 
emigrating to America, at least in comparatively large bodies. 
They were no doubt encouraged to take this step by the accounts 
which reached them of the success of the Ulster Protestants 
who had gone before, and whose posterity is now to be found in 
the South chiefly, as low down as Carolina and Georgia. 

But the relative prospects of the Protestants and Catholics 
were at that time far from being equally good. The first, driven 
from home by famine, found a land of plenty awaiting them, a 
genial climate, perfect toleration of their religious tenets every- 
where, and in some districts they gained real political influence. 
They were received with open arms by the colonists, who were 
unable to occupy the land alone, and ready to welcome new fel- 
low-citizens, who would aid them in their contests with the Indi- 
ans, and add materially to their prosperity and resources. All 
persons and all things then smiled on the new-comer, and with- 
in a very short time he found himself possessed of more than he 
had ever expected. Thus others were induced to follow from 
the north of Ireland, and famine was no longer the only motive 
power which impelled them to leave their native land. Mr. 
JBancroft tells us they were called Scotch-Irish. 

On the other hand, the Irish Catholics found a fertile soil 
and an inviting climate ; l^ature welcomed them, but man re- 
coiled, inflamed by a bitter hostility against their faith and theii* 
very name. This feeling of opposition, on both accounts, was 
already fast wearing away in Europe ; but the " liberality " spring- 
ing up in the Old World, owing to a variety of circumstances, 
had not yet penetrated into the British colonies of E'orth Amer- 
ica. They were still, in this respect, in the state in which the 
Eevolution of 1688 had left them : Catholicity was proscribed 
everywhere, and the penal laws of the Old World were attempted 
to be enforced in the New, as far as the diflerent state of the 
country would permit, A few details, taken mainly from Mr. 
Bancroft's history, will give us a tolerably exact idea of the 



EMIGEATIOK 393 

situation in wliicli.tlie newly-arrived Irisli Catliolic found him- 
self in that future land of liberty. 

The consequences of the downfall of James II. were soon 
fully accepted by the British colonies, throughout which changes 
of greater or less degree took place in the laws, not only without 
any great opposition, but in the main with the full applause of all 
parties. The Stuart dynasty was thrown over more easily in 
America than it had been in the British Isles. 

It is nniversally admitted that one of the greatest consequences 
of that downfall was the renewed persecution of Catholics in 
England and Ireland. In the words of Mr. Bancroft : 

" The Revolution of 1688, narrow in its principles, imperfect 
in its details, frightfully intolerant toward Catholics, forms an 
era in the liberty of England and of mankind." 

It will be no surprise, then, on coming to review the various 
colonies, to find the oppression of the Catholic Church common 
to all without one exception. 

Beginning with the South, we find the new governor of South 
Carolina, Archdale, a Quaker, and, on that account, personally 
well disposed toward all, desirous of showing that a Quaker 
could respect the faith of a " Papist," commencing his administra- 
tion by sending back to the Spanish Governor of Florida four 
Indian converts of the Spanish priests, who were exposed as 
slaves for sale in Carolina. He likewise enfranchised the Hugue- 
nots of South Carolina, who, up to this time, had been kept 
under by the High Church oligarchy. Yet, when he came to 
urge the adoption of liberal measures toward all in the state, 
the colonial Legislature consented to confer liberty of conscience 
on all Christians, with the exception of " Papists." 

In North Carolina, the Church of England was actually made 
the state Church, in 1704, and the Legislature enacted that " no 
one who would not take the oath prescribed by law should hold 
a place of trust in the colony." 

Of Yirginia, Spotswood, the governor, could write to Eng- 
land, in ITll : " This government is in perfect peace and tran- 
quillity, under a due obedience to royal authority, and a gentle- 
manly conformity to the Church of England." 

Of Maryland, Mr, Bancroft writes that the English devolu- 
tion was a Protestant revolution. 

" A convention of the associates ' for the defence of the Prot- 
estant religion' assumed the government, and, in an address to 
King William, denounced the influence of the Jesuits, the prev- 
alence of popish idolatry, the connivance by the previous gov- 
ernment at murders of Protestants, and the danger from plots 
with the French and Indians." 

Hence, a little farther on, we read : " The Homan Catholics 
alone were left without an ally, exposed to English bigotry and 



394 EMIGRATION. 

colonial injustice. They alone were disfranchised on the soil 
which, long before Locke pleaded for toleration, or Penn for 
religious freedom, they had chosen, not as their own asylum 
only, but, with Catholic liberality, as the asylum of every per- 
secuted sect. In the land which Catholics had opened for Prot- 
estants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim to Anglican 
intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. N^o Catholic 
priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. 
'No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a 
Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrested for him 
from his parents a share of their property. The disfranchise- 
ment of the proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. 
Such were the methods adopted ' to prevent the growth of 
Popery.' " 

Mr. Bancroft adds with much truth and force : " "Who shall 
say that the faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the 
faith of the common people? Who shall say that the many 
are fickle, that the chief is firm ? To recover the inheritance of 
authority, Benedict, the son of the proprietary, renounced the 
Catholic Church for that of England ; the persecution never 
crushed the faith of the humble colonists." 

Pennsylvania appears to form an exception to that univer- 
sal animosity against Catholics. It is said that, owing to Wil- 
liam Penn, " religious liberty was established, and every public 
employment was open to every man professing faith in Jesus 
Christ. ... In Pennsylvania human rights were respected : the 
fundamental law of William Penn, even his detractors concede, 
was in harmony with universal reason, and true to the ancient 
and just liberties of the people." 

Such may have been the written law — the theory ; but the 
law as executed — the fact — was far from realizing those fine 
promises. As late as the end of the Eevolutionary War, the Cath- 
olics of Philadelphia were compelled to hide away their worship 
in a small chapel, surrounded by buildings whose only access 
was a dark and winding alley still in existence a few years back. 

It is known, moreover, that Penn himself, in 1708, forbade 
mass to be celebrated in the colony. According to T. D. McGee, 
Governor Gordon, in 1T34, prohibited the erection of a Catholic 
church in Walnut Street ; and, in 1736, a private house having 
been purchased at the corner of Second and Chestnut streets for 
the same object, it was again prohibited. 

New Jersey showed her liberality in the form sacred to all 
the other colonies : " Liberty of conscience was granted to all 
but papists." 

There was as yet no homogeneity in ISTew York, the Dutch 
still preserving great power, and, consequently, " the idea of 
toleration was still imperfect in New iTetherlands ; equality 



EMIGEATIOK 395 

among religious sects was unknown." If this was the case with 
several Protestant organizations, what must it have been with 
the Catholics ? It is well known that no one dared openly avow 
his faith in the true Church, and that John Ury was hanged in 
1741 for being a priest, though whether he was a priest or not is 
still a question. 

Rhode Island had proclaimed in the beginning " entire free- 
dom of mind ; " but, after the Revolution of 1688, the colony 
" interpolated into the statute-book the exclusion of papists from 
the established equality " 

The spirit of Connecticut is well expressed in the words of the 
address sent by the colony to King William of Orange, on his acces- 
sion : " Great was the day when the Lord who sitteth upon the 
floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jor- 
dan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance 
of the English dominions from popery and slavery." We wonder 
how the taciturn Hollander received this effusion of Connecticut ? 
There is nothing more to add on the situation of the Catholics in 
the land of the " blue laws." 

In Massachusetts it will be no surprise to hear that " every 
form of Christianity, except the Roman Catholic, was enfran- 
chised." 

This short sketch is eloquent enough with reference to the 
position in which the poor Irish immigrant found himself on land- 
ing on the shores of the 'New World. His faith he found pro- 
scribed as severely almost as in his own country. He was com- 
pelled to conceal it ; and, even had he been free to make open 
profession of it, he could find no minister of his creed tolerated 
anywhere. The country was a perfect blank as far as the cere- 
monies of his religion went. In his native land he knew where 
to find a priest ; he was advised of the day and of the precise 
place where he might assist at the sacred mysteries of his reli- 
gion ; and, were it in the cave or on the mountain-top, in the bog 
or the morass, he knew that there he could adore and receive his 
God as truly and as worthily as in the magnificent domes looking 
proudly to heaven under Catholic skies. But in British JSTorth 
America, except in a few counties of Maryland, where the true 
faith had once been openly planted and taken root, where some 
clergymen of his own creed were even still to be found, though 
forced to conceal, or at least not expose themselves too freely, 
he knew that elsewhere it was useless for him to inquire, not 
only for a sacred edifice where he might go to thank his God on 
landing, but even to look for a priest should he find himself at 
the point of death. 

At the present day it is almost impossible to give any details 
and move the reader by a picture of the complete spiritual desti- 
tution of the Irish immigrant in his new home. Here and there, 



396 EMIGEATIOK 

however, we meet, in reading, facts apparently insignificant in 
themselves, wliich at first sight' seem to have no connection 
whatever with the subject on hand, yet which, with the aid of 
reflectaon, throw quite a flood of light on it, as convincing as it is 
unexpected. Take, for instance, the following : 

" In the last year of the administration of Andros in Massa- 
chusetts," says Mr. Bancroft, "the daughter of John Goodwin, a 
child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having stolen 
linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the laundress, a 
friendless immigrant, almost ignorant of English, like a true 
woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the false accusation. 
Immediately, the girl, to secure revenge, became bewitched. The 
infection spread. Three others of the family, the youngest a boy 
of less than five years old, soon succeeded in equally arresting 
public attention. . . . Cotton Mather went to pray by the side 
of one of them, and, lo ! the child lost her hearing till prayer 
was over. What was to be done ? The four ministers of Boston 
and the one of Charlestown assembled in Goodwin's house, and 
spent a whole day of fasting in prayer. In consequence, the 
youngest child, the little one of five years old, was ' delivered.' 
But, if the ministers could thus by prayer ' deliver ' a possessed 
child, there must have been a witch. The honor of the ministers 
required a prosecution of the affair ; and the magistrates, Wil- 
liam Stoughton being one, with a ' vigor ' which the united min- 
isters commended as ' just,' made ' a discovery of the wicked in- 
strument of the devil.' The culprit was evidently a wild Irish- 
woman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin, who made the com- 
plaint, ' had no proof that could have done her any hurt ; ' but 
the ' scandalous old hag,' whom some thought ' crazed in her 
intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange answers, wdiich 
were taken as confessions, sometimes, in excitement, using her 
native dialect. ... It was plain the prisoner was a Roman Cath- 
olic ; she had never learned the Lord's Prayer in English ; she 
could repeat the Pater Noster fluently enough, but not quite 
correctly; so, the ministers and Goodwin's family had the satisfac- 
tion of getting her condemned as a witch and executed." 

The position of this poor woman, who had never openly de- 
clared herself a Catholic, but which fact the people were led to 
infer from various circumstances, expresses the condition of all 
Irish immigrants at the time. A further fact recorded by the 
same historian shows what the feeling toward Catholics was at 
the time in Massachusetts : 

" The girl, who knew herself to be a deceiver, had no re- 
inorse, and to the ministers it never occurred that vanity and 
love of power had blinded their judgment." 

The reason was plain : Glover was a Catholic. How could 
the girl be expected to feel remorse for having brought about her 



EMIGEATIOK 397 

deatli ? How could the ministers feel tlie least concern because 
their " vanity and love of power " had effected the hanging of 
such a creature ? — " a vessel of wrath," in any case ; a " predes- 
tined reprobate," beyond doubt, whose ignominious death on 
earth and eternal punishment afterward were " a true source of 
joy in heaven and an increase of glory for the infinite justice of 
God," if there was any truth in Calvinism. 

Another fact, as suggestive as the above, is found in McGee's 
" Irish Settlers in America : " " The first Catholic church that 
we find in Pennsylvania, after Penn's suppression of them in 
1708, was connected with the house of a Miss Elizabeth McGau- 
ley, an Irish lady, who, with several of her tenantry, settled on 
land on the road leading from Kicetown to Frankfort. Kear the 
site of this ancient sanctuary stood a tomb, inscribed, ' John 
Michael Brown, ob. 15th Deceniber, a. d. 1750. K. I. P.' He 
had been a priest residing there incognito.''^ 

Miss E. McGauley was not poor, like Glover. On coming to 
America with some of her tenantry, she secured herself before- 
hand against the difficulty of practising her religion ; and, know- 
ing well that no priest was to be found in the country, she 
brought one with her. All the remainder of his life did this 
minister of God reside in her house incognito, keeping the min- 
istry intrusted to him for the service of all a profound secret. 
He never attempted, probably, to enlighten his prejudiced and 
ignorant neighbors ; the knowledge of his character aild the ben- 
efits arising from his presence were confined to the lady of the 
house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death the secret 
was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters " R. I. P." remain 
to tell an intelligent reader that he was neither Quaker nor 
Protestant ; and, probably, tradition alone, preserved doubtless 
in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was a priest. 

How many Catholics scattered over the broad colony of 
Pennsylvania, immigrants like Miss McGauley, but unlike her in 
their poverty, and therefore unable to hire a clergyman, never 
knew that they might unburden their consciences and enjoy the 
consolations of their religion, by travelling a hundred miles or 
so to the house " on the road leading from Mcetown to Frank- 
fort % " How many lived and died within a short distance, and 
never knocked at the door, owing to their ignorance of the class 
of inmates ? Thus, although there were some ministers of God 
in the country, their number was so small, and they were so far 
distant from each other, that their labors were utterly unavail- 
ing for the great body of the Catholic immigrants, who would 
have rejoiced to throw themselves at their feet, and ease their 
hearts and purify their souls by confession. 

Some Irishmen, it is true, had emigrated before such conceal- 
ment was requisite, in Maryland at least, where an asylum for 



398 EMIGRATIOK 

all liacl been opened by Lord Baltimore, a Catliolic. Thus, tlie 
Carrolls had settled in Prince Oeorge County. They were at 
liberty to make open use of the services of the English fathers 
of the Society of Jesus, who for a long time officiated undis- 
guisedly among their English Catholic flocks ; but, as was seen, 
after the Revolution of 1688, Catholics were disfranchised in 
Maryland even, their religious rites proscribed, and penalties 
enacted against the open profession of their worship. 

Thus, concealment became a necessity there also ; the policy 
of keeping the existence of clergymen and the celebration of the 
holy mysteries secret had to be adopted there as in other colo- 
nies. The Carroll fa,mi\y, like Miss Elizabeth McGauley, gave 
refuge in their house to a minister of their own religion, and it 
was in such a chapel-house that John Carroll was born, on the 
8th of January, 1735 — the first Bishop and Archbishop of Balti- 
more. 

It is therefore no matter for wonder that the number of chil- 
dren of the Church in ISTorth America did not increase in propor- 
tion to the number of Catholic immigrants ; on the contrary, the 
posterity of the majority of those who chose the British colonies 
for their home was lost to her. The immigrants themselves, we 
are confident, never lost their faith. Although living for years 
without any exterior help, without receiving a word of instruc- 
tion or advice, without the celebration of any religious rite what- 
ever, or the reception of any sacrament, yet, faith was too deeply 
rooted in their minds and hearts to be ever eradicated, or shaken 
even. 

But, though they themselves clung fast to their faith in the 
midst of so many adverse circumstances, what of their children ? 

There is no doubt that many of them did, individually, every 
thing possible to transmit that faith to their children ; but all 
they could do was to speak privately, to warn them against dan- 
gers, and set up before them the example of a blameless life. 
ISTot only was there no priest to initiate them into the mysteries 
granted by Christ to the redeemed soul ; there was not even a 
Catholic school-master to instruct them. ■ Even the " hedge- 
school " could not be set on foot. Books were unknown ; Cath- 
olic literature, in the modern sense, had not yet been born ; 
there was no vestige of such a thing beyond, perhaps, an occa- 
sional old, worn, and torn, yet dearly-prized and carefully-con- 
cealed prayer-book, dating from the happy days of the Confed- 
eration of Kilkenny. 

There is no reason, then, for surprise in the fact that, although 
the families of those first Irish settlers were numerous and scat- 
tered over all the district which afterward became the Middle 
and Southern States, only a faint tradition remained among 
many of them that they really belonged to the old Church and 



EMIGRATION. 399 

" ought to be Catliolics." How often was this the ease thirty 
years ago, particularly in the South ! 

It would not be right to conclude that all this was a pure and 
unmitigated loss to the Church of Christ. Later on, we shall 
have to speak of more numerous and serious losses : but a few 
words on this first one may not be thrown away. 

As in the material world an infinite number of germs are 
lost, and quantities of seeds, wafted on the breeze from giant 
trees and humble plants, fall and perish on a barren rock, in the 
eddies of a swift-running brook, or, oftener still, on the hard and 
unkind soil on which they have happened to alight ; so that, out 
of a thousand germs, a few only find every thing congenial to 
their growth, and attain to the full size allotted them by Nature 
— nevertheless, despite this loss, the species is not only preserved, 
but so multiplied as to produce on the beholder, in after-time, 
the impression that, not only no loss has been sustained, but 
that much has been gained. So is it with the Catholic Church 
in general, and in particular with the momentous events now 
being considered. 

The cultivated field of the " father of the family" was about 
to be extended over a new and vast area. A whole continent 
was to be "fenced around," and "olive-trees," and "fig-trees," 
and all plants useful and ornamental, were destined to flourish 
in that vast garden to the end of time. The great and eternal 
Father was, by his providence, directing the mighty operation 
from above, and marking the various points of the compass to 
which the floating germs were to be wafted. He knew that he 
was planting a new garden for his Son, who wou.ld, as usual, be 
the first husbandman, and employ many workmen to help him. 

How could it be expected that all would be gain without loss, 
when the harvest-time had not yet arrived, and the " enemy " 
was busy sowing " tares " in all directions ? Was not the work 
human as well as divine ? and, as human, did not the work par- 
take of the imperfection of human things ? 

The continent had evidently been predestined to form one 
of the strongest branches of the great Catholic tree. Discovered 
before the modern heresies of Protestantism had shown them- 
selves, it was to bring into the fold of Christ new nations, when 
some old ones were to be cut oif and wither away. This has 
long ago been pointed out ; but another mighty design of Provi- 
dence there was which only now begins to show itself. 

Columbus was in search of Asia and the holy sepulchre 
when he stumbled on the New "World. Nor was the idea of his 
great mind altogether a delusion. The new continent was in 
future ages to be used as the highway from Europe to the 
Orient ; China, Japan, India, vast regions filled with innumer- 
able multitudes of human beings, had, so far, scarcely been 



400 EMIGRATI02T. 

touched, could scarcely be touclied, by Catholicism coming from 
Europe. In fact it was too far away, and the means of intercom- 
munication were too inadequate. The holy Catholic Church 
increases as " things which grow ; " a few husbandmen — mission- 
aries — are required to set the first seedlings and plants in the 
soil, to water them, watch over them, and see that they thrive 
and flourish ; the rest of the process is a matter of seeds wafted 
by the wind, falling and taking root in a fertile soil, which has 
been already prepared for their reception. If there were no 
other means of propagation than the toil and sweat of the hus- 
bandman, how long would it take to cover the whole earth with 
vegetation ? The first propagation of Christianity was done in 
this way ; hence it took more than ten centuries to Christianize 
Europe. In the fifth century, Rome was still thoroughly pagan. 
Were the vast regions of that dim, far-away East to undergo 
a similar slow and painful process, necessitating an immense 
amount of labor, centuries and centuries in duration ? God hast- 
ened the process by adding to it the wafting of seeds, and Amer- 
ica was to be the vast nursery from which those seeds were to 
come. It was from that long and alternately widening and 
narrowing belt of land, running down the sea from north to 
south, that the Japhetic race was to invade the " tents of Sem." 

Thus was the dream of Columbus to be realized. Asia would 
be reached by Europe, of which America would form a part. 
The east of Asia would become contiguous to a real European 
population, large masses of which would easily come in contact 
with the Mongolian and Malay races of their immediate neigh- 
borhood, steam and modern improvements in travel reducing 
the intervening distance to a matter of a few days. Thus the 
Japhetic movement could be carried out on a large scale, and 
European civilization come to supersede the obsolete manners of 
those old and effete races of Eastern Asia. The unity of man- 
kind would be vindicated against its blasphemers ; and, to crown 
the whole, Christianity would find its way back to the cradle of 
man, then, to its own birthplace. Calvary and the sepulchre of 
Christ. Thus would the conjectural vision of the great Genoese 
become only an explanation of the old prophecy of the second 
father of mankind.^ 

Thus would the Church at last become rigorously Catholic, 
and not as some theologians imagined, in their desire to make 
actual, incomplete facts coincide with a far wider theory, only 
Catholic by approximation. 

If it were allowed us to read the designs of Providence rever- 
ently, we might say, without presumption, that it seems such is 
to be future history, although simple conjecture may produce 

' The reader will understand that all this is merely " a view," and not giTen as a 
sure interpretation of Scripture or past history. 



EMIGEATIOK 401 

too strong an impression on our minds. But, at the period of 
which we speak, shortly after the middle of the last century, any 
one who would have spoken thus would have been justly deemed 
a visionary. The south of America, though possessed of the 
true religion, seemed inert ; the North was already showing 
signs of an intense future activity, but all opposed to the truth. 
God was about to change those appearances, and, by infusing the 
Irish element into the JN^orth, produce, in a comparatively short 
space of time, the wonderful phenomenon which we witness. 

Yet, so short-sighted are we, that some are almost staggered 
in their faith, because the children of the earliest Irish emigrants 
to this country were apparently lost to the Church. 

]S^evertheless, several circumstances might be brought forward 
to show that a real gain accrued to the Church from these lost 
children of the first Irish settlers. How many prejudices, so 
deeply rooted in the country as to seem ineradicable, owe their 
destruction to them ! How many harsh and uncharitable feel- 
ings against Catholics were smoothed away or softened down by 
their instrumentality ! 

Those men who, in after-life, remembered that they " ought 
to be Catholics," were not ready to accept, on the word of a 
" minister," all the absurd calumnies spread against the Church 
throughout those vast regions. They had heard, by a kind of 
tradition, kept alive in their families, of what their ancestors had 
formerly suffered, and they at least were not inclined to join in 
the universal denunciation of a creed which they were conscious 
" ought to be " their own. 

Who shall say whether it is not the old Catholic blood, run- 
ning in the veins of these children of Irish Catholic parents, 
which has been mainly instrumental in creating that spirit of 
true liberality which inspires the honorable conduct of the ma- 
jority of the American people, and in which the Church has 
at all times found her safety ? 

It is certain that there is a vast difference between that 
American spirit and the atmosphere of distrust pervading other 
countries, and that the rapid spread of the Church throughout 
the broad regions of the Union has been singularly favored by 
the soft breeze of a liberal and kindly feeling so common to 
those even who are not born within the fold. And that the 
children of Irish parents, themselves lost to the Church, have ex- 
ercised great influence from the start, in that regard, cannot, 
we think, be denied. 

But, perhaps, too much space has been devoted to that first 
emigration from Ireland ; it is time to come to a more recent 
period of which there are more certain and positive accounts. 

There is no need to speak of the happy change effected in 
the position of the Catholic Church in America by the Ilevolu- 
26 



402 EMIGEATION. 

tion ; Washington, in his reply to the address of the Catholics 
of the country, has given expression to the feelings of the nation 
in terms so well known, that they require no comment. 

Frorn that date commences the real history of the Catholic 
Church in North America, outside of the provinces originally 
settled by the French and Spaniards. The influx of Irish immi- 
grants now attracts our chief attention. 

From the year 1800, when the "Union" was effected be- 
tween England and Ireland, the number of immigrants increased 
suddenly and rapidly, and the situation of the new-comers on 
their arrival was very different from that of their predecessors. 
They found liberty not only proclaimed, but established ; few 
churches indeed, but, such as there were, known and open, and a 
bishop and clergymen already practising their ministry. 

Before entering upon the extent, nature, and effects of this 
second Irish immigration — which may be studied from documents 
existing — it will be well to say a few words on the elements which 
constituted the Catholic body when first organized. We are 
concerned, it is true, with the new element introduced by the 
great movement of which we begin to speak ; but we are far 
from undervaluing other sources of life, which not only affected 
the Church at its birth in the United States, but have continued 
to act upon her ever since with more or less of energy. The 
reader should not imagine that, by not speaking of them, we are 
unjust or blind to their efficiency ; they simply lie without the 
scope of our plan. 

In the North the French, and in the South the Spanish mis- 
sionaries, had imparted to Catholicity a vitality which could not 
be extinguished ; but its operations were almost entirely confined 
to limits outside those which circumscribe the field of our inves- 
tigations. The French element, however, grew into prominence 
even at the outset within those limits, either through the acquisi- 
tion of Louisiana, or in consequence of the French immigration 
during the terrible revolution of last century. It is only neces- 
sary to open the pages of Mr. R. H. Clarke's recently-published 
" Lives of the American Bishops," to be struck with the impor- 
tance of that element. It may be said that, for the first twenty- 
five years of the republic, French prelates and clergymen, together 
with several American Marylanders, were intrusted with the 
care of the infant Church. Ireland seems to have had scarcely 
any ofiice to fulfil in that great work, save through the humble 
exertions of a few devoted but almost unknown missionaries ; 
so that, when bishops of Irish birth were first chosen, they were 
either taken from Ireland itself, as was Dr. England, Bishop 
Kelly, of Eichmond, or Conwell, of Philadelphia, or from the 
monasteries of Rome, as were Bishops Connolly and Concanen, of 
New York. Bishop Egan, of Philadelphia, can scarcely be called 



EMIGRATIOK 403 

an exception, as he had only spent a very few years in this coun- 
try when he was elevated to the episcopal dignity. The G-erman 
element showed itself only in Pennsylvania, 

It was under circumstances such as these that that stream of 
desolate people began to flow, spreading gradually through im- 
mense regions, and bringing with it only its unconquerable faith. 

From the " mustard-seed " a noble tree was to spring up ; 
but as yet it was only a weak sapling. In 1785, Bishop Carroll 
made an estimate of the Catholic population of the States : " In 
Maryland, seventeen thousand ; in Pennsylvania, over seven thou- 
sand ; and, as far as information could be obtained, in other 
States, about fifteen hundred." 'New York City could not yet 
boast of a hundred Catholics. 

Like all things durable and mighty, the first swelling of that 
great wave was slow and silent, and scarcely perceptible, until 
little by little the ripple spread over the vast ocean. 

The first apparent causes have been well expressed by T. D. 
McGee, in his " Irish Settlers : " " The breaking out of the French 
"War in 1793, and the degrading legislative Union of 1800, had 
deprived many of bread, and all of liberty at home, and made 
the mechanical as well as the agricultural class embark to cross 
the Atlantic. 

" Hitherto the Irish had colonized, sowed and reaped, fought, 
spoken, and legislated in the New World, if not always in pro- 
portion to their numbers, yet always to the measure of their edu- 
cational resources. ISTow they are about to plant a new emblem 
— the Cross— and a new institution — the Church — throughout 
the American Continent. For, the faith of their fathers they did 
not leave behind them ; nay, rather, wheresoever six Irish roof- 
trees rise, there you will find the cross of Christ reared over all, 
and Celtic piety and Celtic enthusiasm, all sighs and tears, kneel- 
ing before it." 

Let us look at a few particular signs of the coming of this 
great wave in its first scarcely perceptible movement. 

" John Timon was born at Conewago, Pennsylvania, Febru- 
ary 12, 1797, and baptized on the 17th of the same month ; his 
parents, James Timon and Margaret Leddy, had quite recently 
arrived in this country from Ireland, and were from Belturbet, 
County Cavan. A family of ten children, of whom John was 
the second son, blessed the Catholic household of these pious 
parents." — {Lives of American Bishops.) 

" Francis Xavier Gartland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 
1805 ; he came to America while yet a child, and made his 
studies at Mount St. Mary's, Emmettsburg," — {Ihid.) 

" John B. Fitzpatrick was born in Boston, November 1, 
1812. His parents emigrated from Ireland, and settled in Bos- 
ton in 1S05:'— (Ihid.) 



404 EMIGRATION". 

"What did the parents of the future bishop find on their arri- 
val at Boston ? In the year previous, the first Catholic congre- 
gation was assembled in that city by the Abbe La Poitre, a 
French navy-chaplain, who had remained in America after the 
departure of the French fleet, which rendered such powerful as- 
sistance in the struggle for American independence. In 1808, 
four years before the birth of him who was destined to wear the 
mitre, the Catholics had obtained the old " French Church" in 
School Street, which was probably a Calvinist meeting-house. 

Another wavelet of a precious kind was the following : 
" Bishop Lanigan was meditating " (in Ireland) " the establish- 
ment of a religious community in the city of Kilkenny, and de- 
signed Miss Alice Lalor for one of its future members. But, in 
1797, her parents emigrated from Ireland and settled in Amer- 
ica, and she felt it to be her duty .... to accompany them. 
But she promised the bishop to return in two years. On arriv- 
ing at Philadelphia, she became acquainted with the Eeverend 
Leonard IsTeale. . . . Feeling convinced that it was not the de- 
sign of Providence that she should abandon America for Ireland, 
Father ]^eale released her from her promise to return to Kil- 
kenny, in order that she might become his cooperator in the 
foundation of a religious order in the United States (the Yisita- 
tion Nuns)."— (/6^'(Z.) 

Already was the young church robbing the old of some of its 
best members, who were to give some weight to the Irish ele- 
ment in this country. 

" George A. Carrell was born at Philadelphia. . . . He was 
the seventh child of his Irish parents, and the house they occu- 
pied, and in which he was born, was the old mansion of William 
Penn, at the corner of Market Street and Letitia Court." — 
{lUd.) 

Two short observations naturally present themselves here. 
Philadelphia is the city oftenest mentioned whenever foreigners 
are spoken of as landing in I^orth America at that time. It was 
then the great harbor of the country, I^ew York not having at- 
tained the preeminence she now enjoys. Hence, the Church 
counted seven thousand children in Pennsylvania, but very few 
north of that city. Thither came the German Catholics, also, in 
great numbers to spread themselves chiefly "West and South. 
Such was the direction then taken by the Catholic wave. 

Our second remark only concerns the house in which he who 
became Bishop Carrell was born. It seemed only fitting that an 
Irish Catholic family should thus early take possession of the 
very dwelling-place of the founder of the colony, as the Catholic 
Church was destined, through the Irish element chiefly, to sup- 
plant and outlive the little church of the '' Friends." 

All the facts, however, just quoted are exceptional, and re- 



EMIGRATION. 405 

gard only the select few. "What became of the mass, mean- 
while ? As usual, history for the most part is silent with regard 
to it. A very few words constitute the only record which can 
afford us a glimpse of the real situation of the vast majoritj^ of 
those poor, friendless, obscure immigrants, on whom, neverthe- 
less, the great hopes of the future were built. 

We have, happily, some means left us of forming an opinion ; 
and it will be seen that their situation was much the same as 
that of their earlier compatriots. For instance, in the " Lives of 
American Bishops " we read the following startling story : 

" The Abbe Cheverus very frequently made long journeys to 
convey the consolations of religion or perform acts of charity. 
About this time (1803) he received a letter from two young Irish 
Catholics confined in Northampton prison, who had been con- 
demned to death without just cause, as was almost universally, 
believed, imploring him to come to them and prepare them for 
their sad and cruel fate. He hastened to their spiritual relief, 
and inspired them with the most heroic sentiments and disposi- 
tions, which they persevered in to the last fatal moment of their 
execution. According to custom, the prisoners were carried to 
the nearest church, to hear a sermon preached immediately be- 
fore their execution ; several Protestant ministers presented 
themselves to preach the sermon ; but the Abbe Cheverus 
claimed the right to perform that duty, as the choice of the pris- 
oners themselves, and, after much difficulty, he was allowed to 
ascend the pulpit. His sermon struck all present with astonish- 
ment, awe, and admiration." 

Here, in 1803, we have almost a repetition of the death of 
the poor woman Glover ; and, had it not been for the high 
character of the admirable man who hastened to their assistance, 
those two young Irish Catholics would have had for their only 
religious preparation before death a sermon from one or more 
Protestant ministers ; and, as the great and good Cheverus could 
not be everywhere in !New England, there is little doubt but 
that such was the fate of more than one of the newly-arrived 
immigrants. 

In 1800 and the following years a comparatively large num- 
ber of Irishmen landed at l^ew York, and the future terrible 
scourge of their race, ship-fever, soon broke out among them. 
Dr. Bailey, the father of Mrs. Seton, was Health Physician to the 
port of Kew Tork at the time, and he allowed his daughter to 
visit and do good among them. She was deeply impressed by 
the religious demeanor of the Irish just landed. The Rev. Dr. 
"White relates in her " Life : " " ' The first thing,' she said, ' the 
poor people did when they got their tents was to assemble on the 
grass, and all, kneeling, adore our Master for his mercy ; and 
every morning sun finds them repeating their praises.' In a 



406 . EMIGEATIOK 

letter to her sister-in-law slie describes their sufferings under the 
* plague ' in the following golden words : 

" ' Kebecca, I cannot sleep ; the dying and the dead possess 
mj mind — babies expiring at the empty breast of their mother. 
And this is not fancy, but the scene that surrounds me. Father 
says that such was never known before ; that there are actually 
twelve children that must die from mere want of sustenance, 
unable to take more than the breast, and from the wretchedness 
of their parents deprived of it, as they have laid ill for many 
days in the ship, without food, air, or changing. Merciful 
Father ! Oh, how readily would I give them each a turn of 
my child's treasure, if in my choice ! But, Rebecca, they have a 
provider in heaven, who will soothe the pangs of the suffering 
innocent.' " 

"When she wrote the above, Mrs. Seton was not yet professedly 
a Catholic ; but how truly animated with the spirit of the Church 
of Christ ! Happy would the poor 'immigrants have been had 
they only met with Protestants of her stamp on landing, and of 
her father's, who, although he prevented her becoming foster- 
mother to those poor children, as her first duty regarded her 
own child, died himself, a victim to his charity toward their 
parents, contracting, in the fulfilment of his office, the fever 
they had brought with them, which he was striving to allay ! 

The following fact, which will conclude this portion of our 
inquiry, happened a little later, but, on that very account, will 
serve as a connecting link with the considerations which are to 
follow, and will open our eyes to the real position of that already 
swelling mass of immigrants. 

" During the year 1823, Bishop Connolly (of E'ew York) 
made the visitation of his entire diocese. . . . He extended his 
journey along the route of the Erie Canal, which was commenced 
in 1819, where large numbers of Irish laborers had been attract- 
ed, and among whom the bishop labored with indefatigable 
zeal." At that time the clergy of the whole diocese consisted of 
eight priests with their bishop. 

At last we find the " Irish people " at work. The spectacle 
is full of sadness ; and the only emotion which can fill the heart 
is one of deep pity. In that vast wilderness of the "West, for 
such it then was, along public works extending hundreds of 
miles, large gangs of men — such is the expression we are com- 
pelled to use — are hard at work along that dreary Mohawk Kiver ; 
blasting rocks, digging in the hard clay, uprooting trees, clearing 
the ground of briars, tangled bushes, and the vast quantity of 
debris of animal and vegetable matter accumulated during cen- 
turies. This was the work which " attracted " large numbers of 
Irish laborers. They had left their country, crossed the ocean 
under circumstances that should come under our notice, and 



EMIGKATIOK 407 

landed on these (at that time) inhospitable shores, to find work ; 
and they found the occupation just mentioned. We can picture 
the " shanties " in which they lived, the harpies who thrived on 
them, the innumerable extortions to which they were subjected. 
Bearing in mind that, in the immense State of New York and in 
one-half of New Jersey, there were just eight priests with their 
bishop, we may form some idea of the way in which they lived 
and died. 

How they must have blessed this bishop, who had left Eome, 
his second country, and the noble associations which surrounded 
him in the Eternal City, to come to the succor of his unfortunate 
countrymen scattered away in a New World ! And well did he 
deserve that blessing ! 

But his passage along the Erie Canal could be nothing more 
than a veritable passage — a transient sojourn of a few days or 
weeks at most. What became of those gangs of men after, what 
had happened to them before, no one has said, no one has told 
us, no one now can ascertain ; we are only left to conjecture, and 
the spectacle, as we said, is too sad to dwell upon. 

But, hidden within this melancholy view, lies a great and 
glorious fact. It was the beginning of an " apostolic mission " 
on the part of a whole people, -a mission which will form one of 
the most moving and significant pages of the ecclesiastical his- 
tory of the nineteenth century. Every Christian knows that 
apostolic work is rough work ; the brunt of the battle must be 
borne by the earliest in the field, that it may be said of their 
successors in the words of the Gospel : " Yos in Idbores eorum 
introistisP 

Such being the hard lot of the immigrants in the interior of 
the country, was that of those who remained in the cities much 
more enviable ? On this point we are enabled to judge, at least 
as regards New York. In a letter written by Bishop Dubois, 
and published in vol. viii. of the " Annals of the Propagation of 
the Faith," we meet with the following exhaustive description : 

" At the beginning of this century, the newly-arrived immi- 
grants were employed as day-laborers, servants, journeymen, 
clerks, and shopmen. Now, the condition of this class here is 
precisely the same as its condition in England ; it is entirely de- 
pendent upon the will of the trader : not because by law are 
they forced thereto, but because the rich alone, being able to ad- 
vance the capital necessary for factories, steam-engines, and 
workshops, the poor are obliged to work for them upon the mas- 
ters' own conditions. These conditions, in the case of servants 
especially, sometimes degenerate into tyranny ; they are frequent- 
ly forced to work on Sundays, permission to hear even a low 
mass being refused them ; they are obliged betimes to assist at 
the prayers of the sect to which their masters belong, and they 



408 EMIGRATION. 

have no other alternative than either to do violence to their con- 
science, or lose their place at the risk of not finding another. Add 
to this the insults, the calumnies against Catholics, which they 
are daily forced to hear — a kind of persecution at the hands of 
their masters, who do every thing to turn them away from their 
religion ; consider the dangers to which are exposed numbers of 
orphans who lose their fathers almost immediately upon landing ; 
add to this the want of spiritual succor, a necessary consequence 
of the scarcity of missionaries ; and you will have a feeble idea 
of the obstacles of every kind which we have to surmount. . . . 
Supposing an immigrant, the father of a family, to die, the widow 
and orphans have no other resources but public charity ; and if 
a home is found for the children, it is nearly always among Prot- 
estants, who do every thing in their power to undermine their 
faith." 

This picture of immigrant-life in New York was certainly 
repeated through all the other large cities. Under such a combi- 
nation of adverse circumstances it is most probable that men and 
women of any other nation would have entirely lost their faith. 
Such, then, was the dreary prospect for the new-comers. Who 
at that time would have dared hope to witness the consoling 
spectacle which followed soon after ? To begin with the dawn of 
that bright day, we must pass on to a new period of immigra- 
tion, commencing in 1815 or shortly after, and continuing down 
to the " exodus " of 1846. 

It may be well, before entering upon it, to look at the causes 
which drove so many to leave the shores of Ireland. From the 
year 1815 the number of immigrants increased considerably and 
kept on a steady increase until it swelled to the startling propor- 
tions of 1850 and the following years. 

It is easy to demonstrate that the causes were twofold : 1. 
The wretched state of the vast majority of the Irish at the best 
of times. 2. The periodical famines which have regularly visited 
the island since the beginning of last century. At any time it 
was in the power of the English to remedy both causes by effect- 
ing certain changes in the existing laws. 

The first of these is evidently the necessary result of the 
penal laws which had converted the Irish, designedly and with 
the wilful intent of the legislators, into a nation of paupers. 
The second can only be the result of the laws affecting the ten- 
ure of land and the trade and manufactures of the country. 

To attribute the pauperism which now seems a part and par- 
cel of the Irish nation while in their own country to the indo- 
lence and want of foresight on the part of the natives themselves, 
as it is a fashion with English writers to do, is wilfully to close 
the eyes to two very important things : their past history in their 
own land, and their present history outside of it. 



EMIGRATION". 409 

As to their past history in their own land, it is an established 
fact that pauperism was unknown in the island, until Protestant 
legislators introduced it by their confiscations and laws with the 
manifest intent of destroying, rooting out, or driving away the 
race. What has been previously stated on this point cannot be 
gainsaid ; and it suffices for the vindication of a falsely-accused 
people. There might be some hope for a speedier and happier 
solution of the vexed " Irish difficulty " did the grandsons of 
those who wrought the evil only honestly acknowledge the faults 
of their ancestors — the least that might be expected of them ; 
and it would not be too much to imagine them honest enough to 
repair those faults in these days of severe reckoning and self- 
scrutiny. 

As to the present history of the race. outside their own land, 
now that it has been scattered, by these grievous calamities, all 
over the world, whatever characteristics its children may present, 
indolence and want of foresight can scarcely be numbered among 
them, in view of the success which attends their march every- 
where. And if these qualities would seem to be rooted in the 
native soil, they are only " importations " like the men who fast- 
ened them there, and due only to the cramped position in which 
their legislators so carefully confined them. Where should there 
be energy, when every motive that could urge it has been taken 
away? How is it possible to improve their condition, when 
every improvement only imposes an additional burden upon 
them in the shape of rack-rent or eviction ? 

In his work on " The Social Condition of the People," Mr. 
Kay quotes from the Edinburgh Review of January, 1850, the 
evidence on this point given by English, German, and Polish 
witnesses before the Committee of Emigration, and the proofs 

fathered from every source as to the rapid improvement of the 
rish emigrant, wherever he goes, are certainly convincing. 

As for the foolish (for it is nothing else, unless it be wicked) 
assertion that those frightful famines referred to are to be at- 
tributed to the suff'erers themselves, it is only necessary to say in 
refutation that in the very years when thousands were being 
swept away daily by their ravages in Ireland — 1846 and 1847 — 
the harbors of the island were filled with English vessels, loaded 
with cargoes of provisions of every kind to be transported to 
England in order to pay the rents due to absentee landlords : 
and all these provisions were the product of the famine-stricken 
land, won by the toil of the famine-stricken nation. This has 
invariably been the case when famine has swept over the 
island : the island's riches were in her harbors, stored in the 
holds of foreign vessels, to be carried away and converted into 
money that these noble Anglo-Irish landlords might be enabled 
to " sustain " life. 



410 EMIGRATION. 

Others have ascribed these periodical visitations to a surplus 
population ; but, without entering into a discussion on the sub- 
ject, Sir Robert Kane, in his " Industrial Resources of Ireland," 
shows that, taking the island in her present state and under the 
existing system of cultivation, she could support with ease eigh- 
teen million inhabitants ; that, if the best methods of farming 
were generally adopted, the soil, by double and even triple crops, 
could feed without difficulty, not only twenty-five million, the 
figure stated by Mr. Gustave de Beaumont, a French publicist of 
eminence, but as many as from thirty to thirty-five million in- 
habitants. 

But, as the same judicious, writer observes, " the enormous 
quantity of cattle annually shipped off from Ireland to England 
would, in that case, be consumed in the country which produces 
it." 

It is clear, therefore, that the pretended surplus population 
of Ireland is, as Sir Robert Kane says, a piece of pnre imagina- 
tion, perfectly ideal, and that it is its unequal and not its aggre- 
gate amount which is to be deplored. 

But no one has presented the question more clearly and solved 
it more precisely than Mr. Gustave de Beaumont in his admirable 
work on Ireland, from which we quote one or two telling passages, 
as given in Father Perraud's " Ireland under English Rule." 

"The celebrated French publicist, who was the first to pre- 
sent to ns (in France) a complete picture of the condition of 
Ireland, examining in 1829 how emigration might or might not 
do away with all the misery he had witnessed, proposed to him- 
self the following questions : 

" I. To what extent ought emigration to be carried, in order 
to bring about a material change in the general state of Ire- 
land ? namely, by taking away the pretended surplus population. 

" II. Would- it be possible to carry it out to the proposed ex- 
tent ? 

" III. Supposing it practicable, would it be a radical and final 
solution of existing difficulties ? 

" The advocates of emigration replied to the first question by 
estimating at a minimum of two million the number of individ- 
uals who would have to leave Ireland, at one time, in order to 
produce there that kind of vacuum which would improve the 
conditions of labor and the existence of the rest of the> agricul- 
tural population. 

" Upon these data the solution of the second question was 
easy. It was by no means difficult to prove that the system was 
impracticable on so large a scale ; impracticable on account of 
the insufficiency of the means of transport at disposal ; impractica- 
ble on account of the'enormous sums required to carry it out. 

" In fact, supposing an emigrant-ship to carry a thousand pas- 



EMIGRATION". 411 

sengers — a very high iigure — two thousand vessels would be re- 
quired to attain the end in view, namely, the sudden and univer- 
sal emigration of the whole so-called surplus population. That 
is to say, the whole merchant navy of Great Britain would have 
to be drawn off from the commerce of the world, and chartered 
for the execution of this very chimerical plan. Where was the 
sum required for the most necessary expenses and urgent wants 
of two million passengers to be got ? And what country in the 
world would have submitted to a monster invasion like those of 
barbarous times ? Unless, indeed, these two million individuals 
were beforehand coldly devoted to death by hunger, was there a 
single country in which it could be hoped they would immedi- 
ately find work or the means of subsistence ? " 

• All those impossibilities, genuine indeed and at the time, 
1829, of -unforeseen solution, became, under Providence, possible 
by extending the period of transportation from one year to 
twenty ; so that, instead of two, in reality three million and a 
half were thus transported. 

But, where M. de Beaumont displayed all his talent for appre- 
ciation and keen reasoning was, when he came to consider the 
third and most embarrassing question of all. Was it certain 
that, the system of renting and cultivating land always remain- 
ing the same, emigration would suffice to heal those inveterate 
sores, and effect, in conformity with the wishes of its partisans, 
a social transformation ? 

On this point, he showed, in a manner admitting of no reply, 
that the emigration of a third or even of half the population 
would not radically put an end to the misery of the country. 
The difficulty with Ireland does not consist in being unable to 
produce wherewith to feed her population ; it lies in the manner 
in which landed property is managed, a system which no amount 
of emigration can possibly modify ; for, " if one of the first prin- 
ciples of the landlord be that the farmer should gain by tilling 
no more than is strictly necessary to support him — if, in addition, 
this principle is, as a general rule, rigidly followed out, and all 
economical means of living resorted to by the farmer necessarily 
induce a rise in the rent — what, upon this supposition (of the sad 
reality of which every one knowing Ireland is perfectly con- 
scious), can be the consequence of a decrease of population ? " 

Always obliged to live as sparingly as possible, in order to 
escape a rise in the rent, and forced to undergo daily privations, 
in order to meet his engagements, how is the Irish farmer to gain 
by the departure of his neighbor ? " Thas, after millions of Irish- 
men have disappeared, the fate of the population which remains 
is in no wise changed ; it will forever be equally wretched." 

Then, glancing at the past, making a sad enumeration of 
Ireland's losses during the last three centuries, and evoking from 



412 EMIGRATION". 

these too eloquent figures the accents of a touchmg eloquence, 
the writer asks himself how far so' much bloodshed, such armies 
of individuals, stricken down by death, or hurried out of the 
country by transportation — so many families extinct, and the 
like — ^had contributed to restore and save Ireland ? 

" Open the annals of Ireland, and see the small amount of 
influence which all those violent enterprises and aU those ex- 
traordinary accidental causes of depopulation have had upon the 
social state of the country. Calculate the number of souls that 
perished during the religious wars; count the thousands of 
Irishmen that perished under the sword of Cromwell ; to all that 
the victor massacred add the myriads that he transported ; think 
of the hundreds of thousands who sank under famine, the number 
of whom exceeded in one year, 1741, forty thousand ; do not over- 
look the formerly considerable number who yearly died by the 
hand of the executioner ; in fine, to this add the twenty-five or 
thirty thousand individuals who emigrate from the country 
every year " (this was written before 1830) ; " and, having laid 
down these facts, you look for the consequences : when, in the 
midst of these different crises, you see Ireland always the same, 
always equally wretched, always crammed with paupers, always 
bearing about with her the same hideous and deep wounds, you 
will then recognize that the miseries of Ireland do not arise 
from the number of her inhabitants ; you will conclude that it is 
the nature of her social condition to generate unmitigated indi- 
gence and infinite distress ; that, supposing millions of poor 
swept out of her by a stroke of magic, others would be seen rising 
up in abundance out of a well-spring of misery, which in Ireland 
never dries up ; and that the fault does not lie in the number of 
her population, but in the institutions in force in the country." 

The celebrated French writer had certainly pointed out what 
were the real causes of the distress in Ireland. He had shown 
how false were the pretended causes then assigned for it by 
Englishmen ; he touched the key-note — the land tenure ; and, 
as a well-wisher to Ireland, deprecating any new calamities, he 
was firmly opposed to those various fancy projects of emigration 
en masse, suggested by numerous British writers, many of whom, 
such as the editors of the London Times, were induced to pro- 
mulgate them by their deep hatred for the old race, which led 
them to represent under a modern garb the old I^orman and 
Puritan philanthropic desires of rooting out and sweeping off the 
Irish from the land. 

The projects of emigration, therefore, were most eagerly ad- 
vanced by the enemies of the Irish, their real friends being, on 
the whole, opposed to the movement at the tune. But, the true 
causes of Irish misery being either unseen or unappreciated, or, 
if known, studiously fostered, with a view of bringing about the 



EMIGRATION 413 

one aim which ran all through the English policy, of emptying 
the island and destroying the race, eventually it did actually be- 
come a dire necessity for the people to fly ; and therefore, from 
1815 to 184:5, the wave of emigration began to rise fast, and go 
on swelling in volume and widening in extent from year to year. 
Midway between the two extreme points, about 1830, it amount- 
ed to between twenty-five and thirty thousand. M. de Beaumont 
could not see how two millions could be transported at once. 
I^or were they. But he did not foresee that in the twenty years 
succeeding that in which he wrote more than three millions and 
a half would actually be shipped from the island ; and all the 
difficulties that he anticipated — the number of ships requisite, 
the immense amount of money needed, the countries where such 
numbers might be received — were furnished by Providence for 
the spread of the Irish in many lands. But these considerations 
can only be briefly touched upon here ; they will form the inter- 
esting subject of the next chapter. What we have now to con- 
sider is the commencement of the great exodus, confined so far 
to Canada and the United States, but already working wonders 
over the vast stretch of country which spreads away between the 
St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico. 

According to the official records of emigration from the 
" United Kingdom," from 1815 to 1860 inclusive, we find that, 
in genera], the greater number emigrated to Canada up to 1839 ; 
from that epoch, but chiefly after 1845, the greater number went 
directly to the IJnited States. Let us first look for a reason for 
this change of destination, and afterward for its result. 

Homer, wiser than many modern philosophers, tells us that 
" there are beings which have a certain name among men and an- 
other quite difierent among the gods." What is true of names, 
is true likewise of what they represent, motives and things in 
general. Men often assign to actions motives far different from 
those known to God ; and, in like manner, the motives of men, 
visibly impelled by the Spirit of God, are often far beyond the 
comprehension of " philosophers." We are far from presuming 
to dive into the divine thoughts with the certainty of bringing 
to the surface what lies hidden in their mysterious depths ; but 
every Christian should endeavor humbly to penetrate them, and 
modestly set forth what he gathers from them. 

What object can be assigned for the Irish emigrating in such 
large numbers to Canada for a quarter of a century, from 1815 
to 1840 ? It cannot be because Canada is, as it then was, a 
British colony : the English Emigration Commissioners had the 
honesty to confess, later on, that the rush to the United States 
was in consequence of their desire to avoid dwelling under the 
English flag. It was not because, in Canada, a greater facility 
opened up for obtaining good land ; for, in Lower Canada, 



414 EMIGRATION. 

where thej tarried for a long time, the land was already occupied 
bj French-Canadians, and, in that severe climate, the soil is not 
over-productive. It cannot have been the facility for transporta- 
tion — during about six months of every year, the mouth of the 
St. Lawrence is closed to ships, and travel through a frozen land 
is not the most desirable thing, particularly to homeless and 
moneyless immigrants. Last of all, it was not the similarity of 
climate and language with those of their own island. What, 
then, can it have been ? 

In our own opinion, the human motive of the Irish can have 
been no other than a religious one ; in the Divine mind, the 
motive was of a still higher and more merciful character. The 
Irish had heard, from the few of their countrymen who had 
already emigrated to the United States, of the great difficulty 
they experienced in practising their religion. On the other 
hand, they knew that, throughout Lower Canada, there was not 
a village without its Catholic church and priest, and that Quebec 
and Montreal were important and entirely Catholic cities. This 
great fact blinded them to the many disadvantages they would 
have to undergo in emigrating to such a country ; or, rather, 
they saw the disadvantages, but the thought that their religion 
and that of their children would be safe in Canada was enough 
for them. It is the same people ever, in the nineteenth century 
as in those which preceded it, and all noble minds must respect 
the7n for thus first looking to the supernatural. 

But, had the Almighty a design in directing them to the 
north of the continent, and establishing so great a number of 
them permanently in that country? We are fully persuaded 
that the Irish race is now, and ever has been, predestined to ful- 
fill a high mission on this earth. What is now transpiring 
under our eyes is too clear to be denied by any Christian ; and 
admitting the general fact that the race must be an instrument 
in the hands of God to spread his Church throughout, in English- 
speaking countries particularly, to correct, by their presence and 
influence in every quarter of the globe, the evil effects of the 
spread of what we call Japhetism among Oriental races — ^let us 
endeavor to see how their coming to settle in Canada served for 
that great end. 

The Gospel of our Lord was first preached in those dreary 
regions by religious of the Gallic race. The labors of Catholic 
missionaries in Canada, of the members of the Society of Jesus 
particularly, are now well known and appreciated. The French 
colony in Canada was from the first a Catholic colony. It was 
not a conquest ; it was not a commercial enterprise ; it was not 
a transatlantic garden for luxurious Frenchmen : it was what 
Mr. Bancroft has well called it, " a mission." The desire of 
winning souls to Christ had begun the work, had run all through 



EMIGEATIOK 415 

it almost to the end. The blood of martyrs had consecrated it ; 
that of Kasles, shed by heretics ; of Lallemant, Brebeuf, and 
Jogues, by pagans. But, after the surrender of the colony to 
England, although the terms of the cession were as favorable to 
religion as could be desired, and the British power could not 
introduce there any of the penal laws still pressing so hard on 
English and Irish Catholics, nevertheless, a great danger arose 
in consequence, which is particularly visible now after more than 
a century has passed away. Though Catholicity could not be 
persecuted, and, for once, England faithfully observed the terms 
of a capitulation which involved a religious side, as little could 
heresy be excluded or denied some of the privileges which it 
enjoys in the mother" country. The government was to be 
administered mostly by Protestant officials ; the new-comers 
from England would be composed, for the greater part, of Prot- 
estant merchants and artisans. The Anglican Church would 
soon gain the prestige of wealth and influence. The country in 
the east, it is true, thickly settled by Catholic farmers, would 
long remain Catholic ; but in the large towns, Quebec and Mon- 
treal chiefly, an influx of Protestants of every sect was to be 
expected ; while in the west, where the French had scarcely 
occupied the country, the numerical majority would soon lean 
to the side of the new arrivals from England and Scotland. The 
English tongue would gradually supersede the French, and it 
might have been foreseen from the beginning that, within a 
given time, notwithstanding the rapid increase of French-Cana- 
dians by birth, Catholicity would lose first its preemhience, and, 
perhaps, after a while, occupy a very inferior rank. 

The religion professed by the many millions connected with 
the centre of unity has never shrunk from an equal contest, and 
Is sure of victory when left free and untrammelled ; but in Cana- 
da it should be observed that, had it not been for the coming of 
the Irish, the whole of the Catholic population would have 
spoken French, being surrounded and absorbed almost by sec- 
tarians of every hue, all speaking English. The strange spectacle 
would there have shown itself — a spectacle, perhaps, never wit- 
nessed hitherto — of a Catholic and Protestant language. The 
separation pf the two camps would have rested chiefly upon this 
peculiar basis ; and there can be no doubt that, with the vigorous 
youth of the United States, developing so rapidly in the South, 
and destined to carry with it the English tongue over all the 
I*f orthern continent, together with the spread of the English and 
Scotch ISTorth and West, the French language was destined to 
become circumscribed within narrower and narrower limits, and 
its final disappearance in America would be probably only a 
work of time. 

If it is permitted us to study, love, and admire the designs 



416 EMIGEATION. 

of Providence among men, who shall say that it is presumption 
to assert that God's was the hand which directed the Irish exiles 
and set them in their place, in order to prevent the sad spectacle 
of a land settled by holy people, belonging almost exclusively to 
God and to Christ, endeared to the true Church by so many 
labors endured for the spread of truth, and memorable by so 
many heroic virtues practised in those frozen wilds and dreary 
forests, from falling sooner or later into the hands of the most 
unrelenting enemies of the papacy '? 

It cannot be presumptuous to attribute it to the designs of 
Providence, as otherwise it is impossible to discover any reason 
whatever which might influence the Irish in selecting that deso- 
late spot for their place of exile. They came, therefore, in great 
numbers, to set themselves under the spiritual control of priests 
unable to understand either their native language or the bor- 
rowed English they brought with them ; they came, confident 
that all the Catholic churches built prior to their coming would 
be open to them, and that the pastors of those French congrega- 
tions would receive them, not as strangers, but as long-lost 
children, at last let loose from a land of bondage, come to share 
the freedom secured by the settlers. 

The statistics of immigration having been accurately kept 
since 1816, it is easy to ascertain the number of Irish people who 
landed in Canada during the precise period under investigation. 
And, although a certain number, which increased with the years, 
did not remain in the country where they first landed, but 
pushed on immediately, or shortly after, south to the United 
States, still, a large proportion settled permanently in the 
country. 

Half a million English-speaking persons arrived in Canada 
between the years 1815 and 1839. At that time there was no 
distinction made between the three different classes coming re- 
spectively from England, Scotland, and Ireland ; but, when this 
classification afterward came to be made, the Irish formed a 
steady three-fourths of the whole. Applying this proportion to 
the time under consideration, we have the large amount of three 
hundred and seventy-five thousand. The number was afterward 
considerably increased, although a greater number still went 
directly to the United States ; so that it is ascertained that within 
ten years, from 1839 to 1849, four hundred and twenty-eight 
thousand Irish people arrived in Canada ; that is to say, at a rate 
of fifty thousand a year. 

The country in which they settled was certainly large, as it 
comprised not only Canada proper, but also the British provinces 
of Kew Brunswick, ]!^ova Scotia, and the large islands in the 
vicinity. But, as the Irish, contrary to their former custom, 
now prefer to dwell in large towns and assemble together rather 



EMIGRATION. 417 

than find themselves, as it were, lost in a sparsely-peopled dis- 
trict, the population of important cities, such as Quebec and 
Montreal, and of the growing western towns of Toronto, Kings- 
ton, and others, was very sensibly affected by their arrival. The 
English was no longer to be an exclusively Protestant tongue ; 
and, as the more rapid increase of the Irish by birth would soon 
equalize numbers, and give them eventually the preponderance, 
it was clear that the country would ultimately remain Catholic, 
even supposing that the French tongue should be finally for- 
gotten. 

The first extensive emigration to the large cities of Canada 
was also owing to the fact that, the eastern provinces not having 
come under the stipulation of the capitulation treaty, the penal 
laws were still unrepealed in that district. Toward the begin- 
ning of this century we find Father Burke, wishing to open a school 
for Catholic children at Halifax, ITova Scotia, threatened with 
the enforcement of the law by the then governor of the province, 
if he persevered in his attempt, a threat which was only prevent- 
ed from being carried into execution by the liberal spirit of the 
Protestant inhabitants. The flow of emigration to the colonies 
south and east of the St. Lawrence was, consequently, of a 
much later, in fact, for the most part, of quite recent date. 

In ^Newfoundland the case was still worse. That region had 
been ceded to Great Britain by France, in 1713, at the Treaty of 
Utrecht ; and, although that treaty stipulated that freedom of 
worship should be guaranteed, nevertheless, the country re- 
mained closed to Catholic clergymen, the stipulation being nul- 
lified by the treacherous clause " as far as the laws of England 
permitted." Hence, the French Catholics with their clergy 
were soon obliged to leave the colony, and as late as 1765, ac- 
cording to Mr. Maguire (" Irish in America "), the governor of 
the island was issuing orders worthy of the reign of Queen Anne. 
In the words of Dr.'TMurdock, Bishop of St. John's, ISTewfound- 
land, "the Irish had not the liberty of the birds of the air to 
build or repair their nests ; they had behind them the forest or 
the rocky soil, which they were not allowed, without license diffi- 
cultly obtained, to reclaim and till. Their only resource was 
the stormy ocean, and they saw the wealth they won from the 
deep spent in other lands, leaving them only a scanty sub- 
sistence." 

The Irish had therefore to fall back on the cities of Lower 
Canada, where, moreover, they found numerous churches and 
priests. Hence, Quebec was their first place of refuge, and they 
soon formed a large percentage of the population. Montreal was 
their choice from the first, where they arrived in crowds, at- 
tracted by the intense pleasure they felt at the happy chance 
of living and dying in a really Catholic city, where, turn in what 
27 



418 EMIGEATIOK 

direction they would, their eyes were gladdened by the sight 
of magnificent churches, colleges, convents, hospitals, with the 
cross, the symbol of their faith, surmounting nearly all the pub- 
lic edifices of the city. 

Western Canada was as yet an uninviting field for the Irish. 
A large number of Scotchmen and " Orangemen " had already 
settled there, when the British Government, having adopted the 
scheme of emigration for Ireland, ofi'ered them favorable condi- 
tions for transport and settlement. It was on the west chiefly 
that an invasion of English Protestantism threatened, and the 
Catholics of Ireland were, in the dispensation of Providence, to 
meet that danger. It is no surprise, then, to find the English 
Government itself made subservient to designs very difterent 
from its own, offering in 1825 to bear the whole expense of 
establishing large bodies of Irishmen on these wilds — wilds then, 
but full of promise for the future. Among other colonies trans- 
ported bodily, Mr. Maguire tells of four hundred and fifteen 
families, comprising two thousand individuals, all from the south 
of Ireland, genuine " Irish in birth and blood," transported from 
Cork harbor to Western Canada, on board British ships, under 
the auspices of the government. Their story will well repay the 
reading, and above all their remonstrance to the governor of 
the province, after they had surmounted the first difficulties of 
their new position : " We labor under a heavy grievance, which, 
we confidently hope, your Excellency will redress, and then we 
will be completely happy, viz., the want of clergymen to admin- 
ister to us the comforts of our holy religion, and good school- 
masters to instruct our children." 

In spite, however, of the efforts made by British statesmen to 
direct the flow of Irish emigration to, the northern part of the 
American Continent, the number of those who voluntarily 
crossed the Atlantic to settle directly in the United States was 
steadily increasing. Not only did they find there perfect free- 
dom of religion, but the absence of clergymen was being gradual- 
ly less felt, and each new bishopric created became a centre of 
religious life and vigor. 

Moreover, the new republic had turned out to be the most 
energetic and enterprising nation which the world had yet seen. 
A whole continent lay before it to subdue, and at once the young 
giant prepared to grapple with the truly gigantic difficulty. 
With the arrival of every " packet-boat," Europe was astonished 
to hear of the amazing vitality displayed by a nation of yesterday, 
composed of a few millions of individuals, who had already 
spread their frontiers as far north as the whole line of the great 
lakes, as far west as the Pacific coast, and southward to the Gulf 
of Mexico. Louisiana fell in, and, from a state of torpidity in 
which it had slumbered, the vast territory which then went by 



• EMIGKATIOX. 419 

that name waked suddenly into a prodigiously active life. At 
the very beginning of the century, the Missouri had been navi- 
gated to its source, and Lewis and Clarke, crossing the high ridge 
of the Eocky Mountains, had descended the Columbia to its 
mouth, and settled the boundary of the United States along the 
far-spreading Pacific. The mighty Mississippi, in the midst of 
that splendid domain, belonged from source to mouth to the re- 
public, and, with its tributaries, was already alive with numerous 
steamboats, passing up and down, bearing their life and all its 
belongings with them, and the (at that time more numerous 
still) flatboats, carried down the stream, to reach, in due time, 
I^ew Orleans. 

There was small thought of hindering " foreigners " from 
coming to take a share in the giant enterprise. All the inhab- 
itants were in fact foreigners to the soil ; and the new-comers, 
no matter from what country they came, had just as good a right 
to sit at the common board as the first-landed. It was felt and 
wisely acknowledged to be the real interest of the young nation 
to welcome as great a number as Europe could send. 

Thus have we already seen large numbers of Irishmen labor- 
ing along the Erie Canal. There was not a public work under- 
taken at the time in which they did not bear a welcome hand. 
And what race of men could be found better fitted for such 
work? It would indeed be interesting to show from good 
statistical tables what share Irishmen have really had in building 
up the prosperity of the Union by their labor, skilled and un- 
skilled. 

At the period we have now come to, they were already crowd- 
ing in at the harbors of the Atlantic, so astonishing to the newly- 
arrived European by the extraordinary activity which character- 
izes them ; they were numerous in the factories just starting into 
life, from the desire of not depending on England for all manu- 
factured goods ; they were multiplying in large hotels, in private 
families, in the fields outside the large cities. Above all, the 
buildings erected at the time, in such great numbers, employed 
many of them as mechanics and laborers ; and whenever some 
grand undertaking, which looked to the future welfare of the coun- 
try, demanded a large draft of men, there were they to be seen 
as they had never been seen before, even in their own country, 
where all labor was reduced to the individual efi"orts of each, just 
sufficient to eke out a miserable life. 

At this time, about 1820, the Irish immigrants settled, for the 
most part, on the Atlantic seaboard ; few had yet crossed even 
the ridge of the AUeghanies. In the Eastern States they found 
occupation enough, and the steady growth of the country required 
their willing aid. Erom that time the JSTorth formed their chief 
point of attraction, and the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, 



420 EMIGEATIOK • 

and 'New York, were their great resorts. Even New England 
was no longer forbidden ground to them, and tliey began to spread 
themselves over its rocky and unpromising surface, to effect there 
a greater moral change than probably anywhere else in the coun- 
try. In 1827, during the first pastoral visitation of Bishop Fen- 
wick, when he erected, on the spot made memorable by the apos- 
tolic labors of Father Easles, a monument to the memory of that 
saintly man, we read that "he then went in search of some Irish 
Catholics living at Belfast, Maine, whom he found suffering both 
for the necessaries of life and for the sustenance of the soul. He 
relieved both their temporal and spiritual wants, and imparted 
them his blessing, and some wholesome advice." 

He was enabled to do more for them in the following year at 
Charlestown, Massachusetts. On the 15th of October, 1828, ac- 
cording to the Boston Gazette^ " he laid the corner-stone of a 
Catholic church near Craigie's Point, desigTied to accommodate 
the Catholics of that place and of Charlestown, who were said 
to be already numerous." There is no doubt that the several 
churches built about that time in Maine, New Hampshire, Mas- 
sachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, were filled rather b}'' 
Irish immigrants than by American converts, although not a few 
consoling examples of this latter method of the Church's increase 
took place about this period. 

But ISTew York was taking the lead as the landing of predi- 
lection for the desolate children of Ireland. Thus, at the instal- 
lation of Bishop Dubois, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, N^ovember 
9, 1826, he addressed himself particularly to the Irish portion 
of his congregation, observing that " he entertained for them 
the liveliest feelings of afiiection. He reminded them of the per- 
secutions they had undergone in defence of their religion, of the 
sacrifices many of them had made on leaving their native coun- 
try, and conjured them always to manifest that attachment to 
the religion of their forefathers which had hitherto so promi- 
nently distinguished them among their brother Catholics." 

The whole State was beginning to swarm with new arrivals 
from the Green Isle. This detachment, however, only formed 
the scarcely perceptible head of the great army which was to fol- 
low. We shall soon return to see its masses steadily treading 
their way on toward the "West, and never halting till they reached 
the Pacific coast ; we will see for what purpose. 

Meanwhile, it is fitting to look at another wing of this army 
taking jts position directly south of Asia, the great continent 
which holds the first dwelling of man on earth, and toward which 
all the tendencies of modern civilization seem to turn. 

An immense island, to which geographers have now given 
the name of the fifth continent, from the dawn of creation lay 
sleeping between the seas known as the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 



EMIGRATION 421 

A few thousand savages, said to be the lowest type of the human 
family, roamed aimlessly over its extensive wilds. Out of the 
ordinary route of circumnavigating explorers, few European ships 
had reached its coast, when the Dutch attempted to form estab- 
lishments on its southern and western sides, giving it the name 
of l^ew Holland. At the end of last century the English Cap- 
tain Cook formed the first successful European settlement — 
Botany Bay — in what he called ISTew South Wales, at the south- 
eastern extremity of the island. The French surveyed a consid- 
erable portion of the western coast at the beginning of this cen- 
tury. But finally, as has so far generally been the case with 
other colonies, the English remained in possession of the whole, 
and, though their first thought was to use it merely as a penal 
settlement, they soon saw the importance of removing their con- 
victs to Van Diemen's Island, and now no less than four or five 
distinct British colonies embrace the entire coast-line of the con- 
tinent, the interior still remaining an unknown desert. 

Immigration, other than the transport of criminals, began 
only in 1825 ; and the white population of ISTew South Wales, 
which in 1810 was only eight thousand three hundred, in 1821 
only thirty thousand, increased rapidly after the discovery of the 
gold-fields in 1851, so that in 1861 more than seven hundred 
thousand free colonists had been landed from British ships on 
the continent and large islands of Yan Diemen and J^ew Zea- 
land, notwithstanding their enormous distance, from Great 
Britain. 

The importance of this vast colony, or, rather, of this ag- 
glomeration of colonies, should not be estimated from their 
extent and productions alone, but chiefly from their proximity 
to Asia toward the north, and to America toward the east. 
Already lines of steamers connect the new continent with China 
on the one side and San Francisco on the other ; and when we 
reflect that the English tongue is the only one spoken through- 
out that vast territory ; that English political institutions, with 
all their attendant machinery of parliaments, elections, municipal 
governments, and liberties, toleration, a free press and free dis- 
cussion, are day by day becoming more deeply rooted in the 
habits of the people, it is easy to perceive how soon the pecu- 
liarities of Japhetism, starting from that centre, will invade the 
whole line of Southern and Eastern Asia and the countless island- 
groups of Polynesia. The Catholic reader will at once perceive 
how the true religion must have been left to struggle, hopelessly 
almost, in its mission of enlightenment and mercy, surrounded 
as it was by so many adverse circumstances, had not the Irish 
element been at hand to fall back on. 

Our information on this important branch of the subject is 
unfortunately not extensive ; nor is this to be wondered at, since 



422 EMIGEA.TIOK 

it is only from 1851 that L'isli immigration really began to show 
itself in Australia, and take an active part in the European rash 
toward that quarter of the world, or, rather, to use the phrase 
of Holy "Writ, " to dwell in the tents of Sem." 

"When Great Britain sent out her first cargoes of convicts to 
Australia, it never entered into the ideas of that enlightened 
power that such an attendant as a minister of religion might be 
wanted, and, as Mr. Marshall says in his book on " Christian 
Missions : " " The first ship which bore away its freight of 
despair, of bruised hearts, and woful memories, and fearful 
expectations, would have left the shores of England without 
even a solitary minister of religion, but for the timely remon- 
strance of a private individual. The civil authorities had 
deemed their work complete, when they had given the signal to 
•raise the anchor and unloose the sails ; the rest was no concern 
of theirs." He adds something more extraordinary and more to 
our purpose still : 

" Among the emigrants to the new continent, soon some of 
those children of Ireland, whom Providence seems to have 
dispersed through all the homes of the Saxon race, that they 
might one day rekindle among them the light of faith, which 
their own long misfortunes have never been able to quench, 
were carried as the first fruitful seeds of the ever-blooming tree 
of the Church." 

To these exiles it was necessary to convey the succors of 
religion. The first Catholic priest who arrived in Australia on 
his mission of charity, and whom the policy of self-interest, at 
least, might have prompted the authorities to greet with eager 
welcome, was treated with derision, and " was directed," as one 
of his most energetic successors relates, " to produce his permis- 
sion," or " hold himself in readiness for departure by the next 
ship." He was alone, and consequently a safe victim ; and 
though, as the latest historian of the colony observes, "his 
ministrations would have been not less valuable in a social than 
in a religiaus point of view," he Avas seized, put in prison, and 
finally sent back to England, because his presence was irksome 
to men who seem to have felt instinctively that his proff'ered 
ministry was the keenest rebuke to their own cruelty and pro- 
faneness. 

This first Catholic priest was the Eev. Mr. Flynn, on whom 
the Holy See had conferred the title of archpriest, with power 
to administer confirmation. Arrived at Sydney in 1818, he did 
much good there in a short time. Mr. Marshall has told us how 
the colonial authorities treated him. 

But a circumstance, not mentioned in this clever author's 
work on " Missions," shows who and what were those Irish 
exiles whom the priest had come to serve and direct in his spirit- 



EMIGEATIOK 423 

nal capacity. "When suddenly carried oif to prison, he left the 
Blessed Sacrament in their little church at Sydney, There the 
faithful frequently assembled during the two years which fol- 
lowed his departure, as large a number as could muster, to offer 
np their prayers to God, and look for consolation in their afflic- 
tion. The visible priest had been -violently snatched away from 
them ; the Archpriest of souls, Christ, remained. 

The Eev. W. Ullathorne, now Bishop of Birmingham, Eng- 
land, was afterward made Yicar-General Apostolic of that 
desolate mission by the Holy See. He. informs us, in a letter 
published among the "Annals of the Propagation of the Faith," 
how these poor Irish people were treated by their " masters " in 
Australia. 

" It was forbidden them to speak Irish, under pain of fifty 
strokes of the whip ; and the magistrates, who for the most part 
belonged to the ' Protestant clergy,' sentenced also to the whip 
and to close confinement those who refused to go hear their ser- 
mons, and to assist at a service which their consciences dis- 
avowed." 

In 1820 two fresh missionaries replaced Mr. Flynn. They 
found the little church where their predecessor had left our Lord 
two years before still in the same state ; and soon the insignifi- 
cant flock, which ever multiplies under persecution, began to 
increase wonderfully, so that twelve years later, out of the whole 
population of the colony — one hundred thousand — there were 
from twenty to thirty thousand Catholics. 

Meanwhile, their emancipation in England had secured their 
rights in the British colonies. There was no longer the threat 
of the whip hanging over those who refused to hear Protestant 
sermons; there was no longer fear of their missionary being 
sent back by the first ship to England. Hence the Holy See 
immediately established the hierarchy of the Church, on a reg- 
ular and permanent basis, there. Dr. Polding being the first 
bishop. 

This may be called an era in the history of the Catholic 
Church. A hierarchy, independent of the state in heretic and 
even infidel countries, is a modern thought inspired by the Holy 
Spirit to the rulers of the flock of Christ to meet modern re- 
quirements. By this new system the long list of so-called Prot- 
estant countries was at once swept away. For no country can 
be called Protestant which has its regularly-established bishops 
of Holy Church, with their authority permanently secured. 
Their dioceses cover the land, and the land consequently belongs 
to the Church, however great may be the number of heretics or 
infidels, and however powerful the organizations antagonistic to 
Catholicity. The " people of God " is there, to multiply with 
the years, and finally absorb all heterogeneous bodies. The 



424: EMIGEATION". 

Cliiircli, as we saw, is a growth ; other bodies are crystallized and 
do not grow ; more, they "become materially and necessarily dis- 
integrated by the action of time and the friction of sm-ronnding 
bodies, of spreading roots and living organisms. 

This plain, mimistahable, eventual truth was the real cause 
which brought about the violent explosion of fear and hatred 
following directly the reestablishing of the Catholic hierarchy in 
England. The opposing forces felt that their hour was come, 
and they could not but shiver at their approaching annihilation, 
small as was the body of the English Catholics at the time. But 
it is not for us to enter here on these considerations, which 
would call for long developments, and which belong more 
fittingly to the general history of the Church than to Irish 
emigration to Australia. 

The few facts glanced at above afford ample grounds for pict- 
uring the state of the first Irish exiles who set foot on that 
broad island of the Antipodes. It was only a repetition of the 
scenes witnessed at the same time wherever the Irish strove to 
propagate the true faith. Later on it will be our pleasure to 
come back to this field and wonder at the growth of a blooming 
garden which has replaced the old sterility. 

Of the other British colonies wherein a certain number of 
Irishmen began to settle at the time of the present investigation, 
no details can yet be furnished. It is easy to suppose, however, 
without fear of mistake, that the spiritual destitution and state 
of more or less open persecution which we have found existing 
in America and Australia, prevailed also at the Cape Colony, at 
ISTatal, in Guiana, Labuan, Ceylon, etc. A very different spec- 
tacle is about to be unfolded before our eyes, and we hasten on 
to behold its wondrous development and splendor — a splendor, 
however, ushered in by scenes of extreme woe. 



CHAPTER XY. 



THE "eXODIJs" Al^D ITS EFFECTS. 



The stream of Irish emigrants, starting from tlie one sonrce, 
separated now and continued flowing to the four quarters of the 
globe, and, at length, its influence was beghming to be felt in 
England itself, the last of the lands whither the Irish exiles 
could think of turning. The poorest, unable to pay their pas- 
sage-monev to ISTorth America, began to show themselves among 
the thick populations of the great manufacturing centres of Great 
Britain. More than fifty thousand depaj-ted annually to settle 
in other climes and plant Catholicity in regions that, from a 
religious point of view, were wildernesses. 

In 1846 came an awful calamity, to impart to the movement 
an impetus of which no one could have dreamed, and which 
went very far to realize what M. de Beaumont had a few years 
before declared to be an impossibility — the almost sudden trans- 
portation of millions of starving Irish. This was the great 
famine, still so fresh in memory, and now appearing to those 
who witnessed its effects like that terrible passage of the destroy- 
ing angel in the night. 

There is no better mode of accounting for this visitation than 
that given by T, D. McGee, in his " Irish Settlers in America : " 

" The famine (of 1846) is to be thus accounted for : The act 
of Union in 1800 deprived Ireland of a native legislature. Her 
aristocracy emigrated to London. Her tariff expired in 1826, 
and, of course, was not renewed. Her merchants and manufac- 
turers withdrew their capital from trade and invested it in land. 
The land ! the land ! was the object of universal, unlimitable 
competition. In the first twenty years of the century, the 
farmers, if rack-rented, had still the war prices. After the peace, 
they had the monopoly of the English provision and produce 
markets. But in 1846 Sir Robert Peel successfully struck at 
the old laws imposing duties on foreign corn, and let in Baltic 
wheat and American provisions of every kind, to compete with 
and undersell the Irish rack-rented fanners. 

" High rents had produced hardness of heart in the ' middle- 



426 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EEEEOTS. 

man,' extravagance in the land-owner, and extreme poverty in 
tlie peasant. The poor-law commission of 1839 reported that 
two million three hundred thousand of the agricultural laborers 
of Ireland were ' paupers ; ' that those immediately above the 
lowest rank were ' the worst-clad, worst-fed, and worst-lodged ' 
peasantry in Europe. True indeed ! They were lodged in styes, 
clothed in rags, and fed on the poorest quality of potato. 

" Partial failures of this crop had taken place for a succession 
of seasons. So regularly did those failures occur, that William 
Cobbett and other skilful agriculturists had foretold their final 
destruction years before. Still, the crops of the summer of 1846 
looked fair and sound to the eye. The dark-green, crispy leaves, 
and yellow-and-purple blossoms of the potato-fields, were a cheer- 
ful feature in every landscape. By July, however, the terrible 
fact became but too certain. From every town-land within the 
four seas tidings came to the capital that the people's food was 
blasted — utterly, hopelessly blasted. Incredulity gave way to 
panic, panic to demands on the Imperial Government to stop the 
export of grain, to establish public granaries, and to give the 
peasantry such productive employment as would enable them to 
purchase food enough to keep soul and body together. By a re- 
port of the ordnance-captain, Larcom, it appeared there were 
grain-crops more than sufficient to support the whole population 
— a cereal harvest estimated at four hundred millions of dollars, 
as prices were. But to all remonstrances, petitions, and propo- 
sals, the imperial economists had but one answer : ' They could 
not interfere with the ordinary currents of trade.' O'Connell's 
proposal, Lord George Bentinck's, O'Brien's, the proposals of 
the society called 'The Irish Council,' all received the same 
answer. Fortunes were made and lost in gambling over this 
sudden trade in human subsistence, and ships laden to the gun- 
wales sailed out of Irish ports, while the charities of the world 
were coming in. 

"In August, authentic cases of death by famine, with the 
verdict, 'starvation,' were reported. The nrst authentic case 
thrilled the country, like an ill wind. From twos and threes they 
rose to tens, and, in September, such inquests were held, and the 
same sad verdict repeated, twenty times in a day. Then Ireland, 
the hospitable among the nations, smitten with famine, deserted 
by her imperial masters, lifted up her voice, and uttered that cry 
of awful anguish which shook the ends of the earth. 

" The Czar, the Sultan, and the Pope, sent their rubles and 
their pauls. The Pacha of Egypt, the Shah of Persia, the Em- 
peror of China, the Kajahs of India, conspired to do for Ireland 
what her so-styled rulers refused to do — to keep her young and 
old people living in the land. America did more in this work 
of mercy than all the rest of the world." 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 427 

The sudden effect of this fearful trial was to increase the total 
emigration from the British Isles from ninety-three thousand in 
1845 to one hundred and thirty thousand in 1846 ; to three hun- 
dred thousand in 1849 ; to nearly four hundred thousand in 1852. 
In ten years from 1846, two million eight hundred thousand had 
fled in horror from the country once so dear to them. From 
May, 1847, to the close of 1866, the number of passengers dis- 
charged at New York alone amounted to three million six hun- 
dred and fifty-nine thousand ! 

Those immense fleets of transports, which M. de Beaumont 
thought necessary, but not to be found, were found. On such a 
sudden emergency, every kind of tub afloat was thought suitable 
for the purpose ; and, all being sailing-vessels, the voyage was 
proportionately long, the provision made for such numbers in- 
sufiicient, and the emigrants, ah-eady weakened by privations, 
were fit subjects for the plague which, under the form of ship- 
fever, rapidly spread among those receptacles of human misery, 
so that, when the great caravan arrived in the St. Lawrence, 
whither that first year all seemed to tend, the following was the 
picture presented : 

"On the 8th of May, 1847, the Urania, from Cork, with 
several hundred immigrants on board, a large proportion of them 
sick and dying of the ship-fever, was put into quarantine at 
Grosse Isle, thirty miles below Quebec. This was the first of 
the plague-smitten ships of Ireland which that year sailed up the 
St. Lawrence. But, before the first week of June, as many as 
eighty-four ships, of various tonnage, were driven in by an east- 
erly wind ; and of that enormous number of vessels there was 
not one free from the taint of malignant typhus, the oflspring 
of famine and of the foul ship-hold." 

The eflects of that awful misfortune may be found vi\ddly 
described in Mr. Maguire's book, from which the above extract 
is taken, on the long line of march of that desolate army of im- 
migrants, leaving its thousands of victims at Grosse Isle, near 
Quebec, at Pointe St. Charles, a suburb of Montreal, in Kings- 
ton, in Toronto, Upper Canada, and, finally, at Partridge Island, 
cjoposite St. John's, ITew Brunswick. 

America was thus destined to witness some of those scenes so 
often enacted on the soil of Ireland, to compassionate the people 
of the holy isle, to open her friendly bosom for the reception of 
the unfortunate beings, who in return gave her all they pos- 
sessed — their faith. 

But what M. de Beaumont so emphatically insisted upon, 
although at first seemingly contradicted by the event, was never- 
theless true. England, the mighty mistress of the seas, did not 
possess ships enough for the purpose of transportation ; and her 
entire navy added to all her merchant-vessels would scarcely have 



428 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

sufficed. Ships had to^ be built, steamers chiefly, in order to 
effect the transportation speedily^ and diminish the dangers of 
the passage. 

Then Providence worked upon the ingenuity of worldly-wise 
men, and set them planning and studying the question in all its 
bearings, to devise new schemes of transportation on a scale not 
dreamed of hitherto. Watt, the Stephensons, Brunei, A. Maury, 
and others, rose up to perfect the various steam-machines already 
known and in use ; to investigate the currents of the ocean, the 
different qualities of its waters, its depth and soundings, in order 
to make the paths of the deep easier and surer to navigators. 
The ingenuity of ship-builders effected a revolution in naval ar- 
chitecture, and rendered possible the construction of vessels of 
from ten thousand to twenty-five thousand tons burden. Mer- 
chant companies and capitalists arose to. embrace the whole 
world in their mighty speculations, studying the capabilities of 
all countries for trade, the most desolate as well as the most in- 
viting, the meanest as keenly as the mightiest, linking the whole 
world in one vast commercial circle, that the European race 
might be borne on to the mercantile conquest of the universe ; 
and all this came about, doubtless, to effect its deeper and more 
permanent moral conquest by the despised, down-trodden, starv- 
ing, dying Irishman, who laid claim to one arm, one possession 
only—his faith and the blessing of the Church. 

Was not tlie Irish exodus intimately connected with all those 
events ? Was it not one of the mightiest causes of all those 
gigantic enterprises ? 

But where were the funds to be found for such immense un- 
dertakings ? The treasury of nations is continually drained of 
vast sums at home, and dare not draw away a part of its metallic 
basis sufficient for such a purpose. Moreover, it is limited, and 
needs the precious metals as a solid foundation whereon to rest, 
or the fabric built upon it will be the fabric of a dream, as was 
that of Law in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
The gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru seem exhausted ; 
the new ones of the Ural Mountains in l^orthern Asia, of the 
Atlantic coast of ITorth America, were not adequate to meet the 
demands of such mighty operations. 

Suddenly, in the year 184:6, a Swiss captain, transformed into 
a California settler, while endeavoring to turn a water-fall in his 
new home to some account, discovers gold-dust in the sand. As 
if by magic, the coast of California, hitherto neglected, difficult 
of access at the time, and consequently ignored by mankind, 
notwithstanding its wealth in mineral and vegetable productions, 
becomes at once the cynosure of all eyes, the hope of all hearts, 
the most renowned of all countries. Thither they flock in 
crowds from all parts of Europe and America, and a steady flow 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 420 

of seventy million dollars annually is secured as a basis for the 
new designs of capitalists and merchants. 

Other gold-fields are soon discovered all along the American 
coast, on the Pacific, from Lower California to Alaska, inviting 
men to go thither and settle, just opposite to the Asiatic Con- 
tinent, separated from it only by the broad but easily-navigated 
Pacific Ocean. 

Soon also, far away south in the antipodes, opposite to anoth- 
er portion of Asia, rich gold-fields are opened up in the newly- 
discovered Continent of Australia, attracting immigration toward 
another spot, whence the Asiatic nations may also be reached 
with greater facility and dispatch. 

Whoever believes that Providence has something to do with 
the afiiiirs of men ; whoever is wise enough to see that this uni- 
verse is not the result of chance, and that its destinies are ruled 
by a superior power, must admit that when events as unexpected 
as they are unprepared by man come to pass — events which are 
so connected together as to reveal the workings of a single mind 
and a great object at once, foreshadowed if not positively fore- 
told, God is the designer, and a stronger hand is at work than 
the combined power of men and devils could successfully oppose. 
This is a truth which was not unknown to Homer, centuries ago, 
when he described Jove holding our globe suspended in space at 
the end of a chain, and defying all the inferior gods to move the 
world in a direction contrary to that given by his mighty arm. 

The image, striking and poetical as it is, for a Christian is 
too material. "VVe speak more correctly when we say that Mind 
— the Divine Mind — is the great invincible and invisible Porce 
of which all material forces are but the created agents, and by 
which all inferior minds must stand or fall, conquer or fail. A 
man must be blind with that incurable blindness — of will — who 
cannot see it acting in and on the universe, and even controlling 
the lower designs of puny intellects. The reverent eye which 
sees the vastness of the plan, the multitude of its agents, aiding 
and seconding it consciously and unconsciously, recognizes it, 
and the supreme object of its workings, Love, infinite Love. 

And we distinguish with grateful surprise all those circum- 
stances visibly appearing in the great fact w^hich has just been so 
imperfectly sketched, and which will come home to us still more 
forcibly when the workings of its lesser details come to be exam- 
ined. Here, for instance, at the moment of writing these lines 
(March, 1872) we learn from the morning newspapers of the re- 
cent arrival of the Japanese embassy at San Francisco ; that its 
members had been dispatched to this country to study European, 
or, as we call them, Japhetic institutions, for the purpose of copy- 
ing and adapting them to their own wants. The embassy, de- 
tained at Salt Lake City by the snow-blockade on the Pacific Rail- 



430 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

road, refused to go back, temporarily, to California, and made up 
their mind to wait in Utali, until it is possible for them to proceed. 

Pacific Railroad, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Japanese 
embassy, adoption of European manners by the Mikado and 
daimios — who can fail to gather from these words and details the 
conception of means to an end, and that end the one we now 
begin to study ? 

The first circumstance coming under our review and indica- 
tive of a loving design on the part of Providence, a circumstance 
not marked sufficiently at the time, is the preservation by the 
English themselves of the poor remnants of the Irish race, 
which the first working of the plan had so frightfully decimated 
and left in danger of being utterly wiped out. Had they disap- 
peared, would Japhetism have become a blessing to the Asiatic 
nations ? The Catholic, looking abroad and casting his mind's 
eye over the vast European field, to all seeming so rich in every 
production, yet in reality so sterile morally, peering with awe 
and horror into the Japhetic caldron — for such it is — seething 
and bubbling to the brim, full of the most deadly poisons and 
noxious substances, ready at any moment to overflow in infected 
waves and sweep over the unfortunate countries which look to it 
so anxiously for blessings, a torrent of black destruction, spread- 
ing around naught but desolation and barrenness — the Catholic 
eye, seeing all this, can find but one answer to our query. The 
Asiatic races cannot hope to be benefited by the introduction of 
European manners among them, unless the same great move- 
ment carries in its train the holy Catholic Church : and as that 
introduction must be brought about by English-speaking leaders, 
the only English-speaking Catholics of numerical significance 
must be the instruments of the adorable designs of Providence. 

That this assertion may not appear too sweeping, it is only 
enough to instance the example of India, which England has 
held long enough to convert, at least in part, had she so desired 
and been moved by the Spirit of God, yet to-day India stands in 
a worse relation toward Protestantism than when Protestantism 
in the name of Christianity, but in the person of a British trader, 
settled down in its midst. What good has Hindostan derived ? 

But, at this very moment, the whole Irish race is at the mercy 
of the English Government and people. Only let the same 
kind of vessels continue to be dispatched filled with Irish emi- 
grants, and the whole race must disappear within a short period, 
or become so reduced in numbers that its operations as a race, 
on a large scale, will be improductive of sufficient results. 

And it is well to mark that at the time of this outpouring 
of the race, as long before, and almost constantly since, there 
were Englishmen rejoicing at the glorious result which death by 
plague and famine was about to produce. It were easy to quote 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 431 

many a barbarous passage from the London Times, expressive of 
the most satanic joy, not only at the departure of the Irish from 
the " United Kingdom," but at the prospect of their ultimate, 
or rather proximate disappearance out of the world altogether. 

Yet it was the same English Government and people which, 
feeling, let us hope, some compassion at the sight of this new 
woe of the " Niobe of nations," determined to try and save her 
children, as, if they must cast them out, at least it should be 
alive and full of health on a foreign shore. 

Laws, therefore, were passed, regulating the quantity and 
quality of provisions, particularly of drinkable water, the num- 
ber of the crew and working-men, the ventilation of the vessel, 
the number of passengers to be received, etc. 

Still, these first attempts at humanity seem to have been 
rather faint-hearted, as the following passage from Mr. Maguire's 
" L'ish in America," showing how they were carried out, and 
how inadequate was the remedy applied in 1848, will explain : 

" The ships, of which such glowing accounts were read on 
Sunday by the Irish peasant near the chapel-gate, were but too 
often old and un seaworthy, insufiicient in accommodation, not 
having even an adequate supply of water for a long voyage, and, 
to render matters Avorse, they, as a rule, were shamefully under- 
handed. True, the provisions and the crew must have passed 
muster in Liverpool ; . . . but there were tenders and lighters 
to follow the vessel out to sea ; and over the sides of that vessel 
several of the mustered men would pass, and casks, and boxes, 
and sacks would be expeditiously hoisted, to the amazement of 
the simple people who looked on at the strange and unaccount- 
able operation. And, thus, the great ship, with its living 
freight, would turn her prow toward the West, depending on her 
male passengers, as on so many impressed seamen, to handle 
her ropes or to work her pumps in case of accident. What with 
bad or scanty provisions, scarcity of water, severe hardship, and 
long confinement in a foul den, ship-fever reaped yet a glorious 
harvest between-decks, as frequent splashes of shot-weighted 
corpses into the deep but too terribly testified. Whatever the 
cause, the deaths on board the British ships enormously exceeded 
the mortality on the ships of any other country. According to 
the records of the Commissioners of Emigration for the State of 
ISTew York, the quota of sick per thousand stood thus in 1848 : 
British vessels, 30 ; American, 9f ; German, Sf. It was yet no 
unusual occurrence for the survivor of a family of ten or twelve 
to land alone, bewildered and broken-hearted, on the wharf at 
Ifew York ; the rest, the family, parents, and children, had been 
swallowed in the sea, their bodies marking the course of the ship 
to the E"ew World." 

It would seem, then, that those first English regulations, by 



432 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

whicli British ships were to pass -muster at Liverpool before sail- 
ing, were not very efficient ; the figures of mortality quoted by 
Mr. Maguire are too eloquent ; and it would be a pleasure to us 
to be able to say with certainty that the more stringent and bet- 
ter executed laws afterward enforced did not proceed from the 
Commission of Emigration, which originated in !N^ew York with 
some generous-hearted Irish- Americans. 

Our readers will have noticed that, even in 1848, with all the 
apparent desire on the part of England to save the remnants of 
the Irish nation, the mortality on board British ships was more 
than three times that on board American vessels, and nearly four 
times greater than that on board German ships. "Why this dif- 
ference ? And why should it be so enormous ? 

It is possible that to the Legislature of 'New York State 
chiefly, and soon after to the Congress of the United States at 
Washington, which enacted stringent laws for the protection of 
immigrants at sea, belong the chief honor of saving hundreds of 
thousands of Irish lives, and that England, whether urged by the 
effects of good example, or for very shame, soon followed in their, 
wake. 

But, whatever the cause may have been, it is a heart-felt 
pleasure to record the fact that from 1849, when an act of Par- 
liament, entitled the "Passengers Act," imposed on ship-owners 
and captains of vessels strict conditions for the welfare of emi- 
grants, government control on this subject became every year 
more immediate and severe. 

Not only were the vessels, provisions, water, medicine chests, 
etc., more carefully examined, but the passengers themselves 
were compelled to undergo a careful inspection as to their health 
and wardrobe. 

And, a thing which had never been done before, the space 
allotted to each emigrant on deck and between-decks was deter- 
mined and subjected to serious control, so that no overcrowding 
of passengers should take place. The penalties, also, on delin- 
quents became even severe ; heavy fines were imposed, and in 
some cases transjiortation to a penal settlement was decreed 
against the more offensive outrages on humanity. 

K all abuses failed to be corrected by such laws, it is because 
the most stringent enactments can, to a greater or less extent, 
always be evaded by those desirous of evading them ; but there 
is every reason to believe that the legislators were honest in 
their intent of remedying the glaring evils which previously 
obtained, and, to a great extent, their efforts met with success, 
as is evidenced by the fact that the mortality on board of British 
vessels has shown yearly a remarkable diminution since that 
time. According to the " Twenty -fourth General Keport," the 
mortality was : In 1854, 0.74 per cent., already a very remark- 



THE "EXODUS" AIlTD ITS EFFECTS. 433 

able diminution on previous averages ; in 1860, it was reduced 
to 0.15 per cent. This was the percentage for vessels going to 
l!^orth America only. 

The first operation of the missionary people was to plant the 
living tree of Catholicism in the United States, and so power- 
fully forward its growth, that other spiritual plants of a noxious 
kind, and weeds that go by the name of creeds, should gradually 
be choked up, finally, let us hope, to disappear. While speaking 
on this subject, and laying before the reader the necessary details, 
we desire not to be held forgetful of the efforts made in a like 
direction by Catholic immigrants of other nationalities. A word 
has already been said of the early influence of the French in the 
North and of the Spaniards in the South, in establishing the 
Church in North America. The German children of the true 
Church, though at first not so conspicuous, have for a long time 
taken, and are now particularly taking, an active j^art in the 
dissemination of the faith, and there can be no doubt that, with 
the daily increase of German immigratioil, their large numbers 
must in course of time make a lasting impression on the terri- 
tory where they settle.' But the French, the Spaniards, and the 
Germans, must forget their language before they become widely 
useful in the great work before them ; and thus the Irish form 
the only English-speaking people on whom the brunt of the 
battle must fall. Moreover, we treat only of the Irish race. 

The wonderful history of the spread of Catholicity in North 
America by the Irish, in the northern part of the United States 
particularly, would call for an array of details which it would be 
impossible to furnish here in extenso. An imperfect sketch must 
suffice. 

First comes the consideration that, when the wave of immigra- 
tion touched the continent, it might have been feared that, by its 
absorption into a dry and parched soil, the aggregate loss would 
have reduced to a mere nothing the ultimate gain. There were 
no churches for the new worshippers, no priests to administer to 
them the sacraments of Christ, no Catholic school-teachers to 
train their children. That is to say, these means of preservation 
and of propagation were so few and so far between, that many 
of the newly-arrived immigrants were forced to establish them- 
selves in places where they could find none of those, to them, 
priceless advantages. 

The spiritual dearth was not indeed so great as that pre- 
viously described. The zeal of bishops and priests, and teachers 
from regular orders, had been so active in its labors, that, aided 
by the liberty which the institutions of the country aftbrded, 
results, astonishing indeed, had already rewarded their efibrts. 
But, after all, what were these compared with the demands so 
suddenly laid upon them by such a rapid increase of numbers ? 
38 



434 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

It miglit be said witli truth of multitudes of immigrants, tliat the 
position in which they then found themselves was very little 
different from that of their predecessors at the beginning of the 
century. 

As late as 1834, Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, wrote : 
" There are places in which there are Catholics of twenty years 
of age, who have not yet had an opportunity of performing one 
single public act of their religion. How many fall sick and die 
without the sacraments ! How. many children are brought up 
in ignorance and vice ! How many persons marry out of the 
Church, and thus weaken the bonds that held them to it ! " — 
{Annals of ths Propagation of Faith, Yol. viii.) 

To the same annals, three years later. Dr. England, of Charles- 
ton, sent the long letter in which he detailed the innumerable 
losses sustained by the Church in America in consequence of the 
want of spiritual assistance. The letter was, in fact, a cry of 
anguish wrung from him by the sight he witnessed. 

Such was the universal feeling among those who could right- 
ly appreciate the fatal consequences of the rush of Catholics to 
the New "World without any provision prepared for their recep- 
tion. And yet all these laments and apprehensions preceded the 
vast inpouring of immigrants subsequent to the year 1846. 
"What must have been the consequent losses then ? Yet, looking 
now, in 1872, at the present state of the Church in the Union, 
who can say that this inpouring and rush, unprepared as the 
country was for its reception, was not one of the greatest means 
devised by Providence, not only for establishing the Catholic 
Church in this country for all time, but likewise as a prepara- 
tion for further developments, not only on this continent, but on 
the part of many a nation now sitting in " the shadow of death ! " 
Deplorable, indeed, were the losses, but permanent and wonder- 
ful the gain. 

The first eifect of the great calamity which occurred along the 
St-. Lawrence and its tributaries, in 1847, was to reduce the 
immigration to Canada to insignificant numbers, and propor- 
tionately increase that to the United States in a quadruple ratio. 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, in ISTew England, and the great 
States of 'Eq-^ York and Pennsylvania, were now the chief places 
of resort for the new-comers ; and from l*^ew York, principally, 
they began to pour, in a long, steady stream, away by the Erie 
Canal, westward to the great lakes. 

All along these lines, congregations were, providentially, 
already formed ; and, in the passage of the stream, they were 
immediately, as by magic, increased, in some instances, to a ten- 
fold proportion. The labors of the clergy were correspondingly 
multiplied, and eftbrts were immediately made to obtain new 
recruits for its ranks. Then appeared a very strange fact, which, 



THj: "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 435 

at the time, was remarked upon by everybody, but has never 
been satisfactorily explained. Wherever the number of worship- 
pers in a church induced the chief pastors to have another con- 
structed in the neighborhood, upon the completion of the new 
edifice, the old one seemed to suiter no diminution in attendance, 
and the congregation attending the new one gave no evidence 
of having hitherto been uncared for. This very remarkable fact 
was of such frequent occurrence that it could not be a delusion, 
or an exceptional case having its origin in some extraordinary 
cause ; it was evidently a providential dispensation, akin, in a 
spiritual sense, to the miraculous multiplication of loaves, twice 
mentioned in the Gospel. 

There have certainly been numerous examples of this, in the 
city of ISTew York particularly, for more than twenty years ; and 
probably the same thing is occurring at the time of the present 
writing. 

Then, another fact occurred, deplored by many, chiefly by 
Mr. Maguire, in the interesting work already quoted from, yet, 
evidently of a providential character also, and consequently 
eminently fruitful, and, it may be said, adorable in its depth. 
The Catholic immigrants, although in their own country agricul- 
turists for the most part, forgot the tilling of the soil as soon as 
they reached their new home, and settled down in great numbers 
in all the large cities, on the line they pursued toward the "West. 
Many special evils resulted from this, detailed at length by those 
whose wonder it excited, and who strove, for excellent motives, 
to thwart this providential movement. But the immense good 
which immediately followed from it, and which, within a short 
time, was to be greatly increased, was never mentioned in reply 
to the reasons advanced by these well-meaning complainants. 
The first result of it was the sudden and necessary creation of 
many new episcopal sees in all large cities, where churches were 
being rapidly built, or had already been erected in astonishing 
numbers. 

Suppose the Catholics had, following the old bent, turned them- 
selves chiefly to the tillage of the soil, and buried themselves away 
in scattered country villages and farms, how long would the crea- 
tion of those new sees have been delayed ? Who is ignorant of 
the effect of a. new see on the propagation of Catholicity ? Cities 
which otherwise would have numbered among their population 
only a few hundred Catholics, scarcely sufficient for the filling of 
one small edifice, saw at once one-third, one-half, or even the 
larger portion of their population clamoring for a Catholic bishop, 
and all the institutions a bishopric brings in its train. It is 
unnecessary to furnish examples of this ; they are around us. 

Yet one difficulty seems to cast some doubt on this view of 
the subject, and strengthen the opposition of those who ardently 



436 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFEOTS. 

advocated the country as tlie true liome for Irish Catholics ; and, 
as the point involves a universal interest, it is better to discuss 
it at once in its chief bearings. 

At the time when those wonderful events were being enacted, 
any one opening a copy of those general State Directories, with, 
which ]?^ew England is particularly blessed, wherein not only 
the great commercial and industrial enterprises of each State are 
enrolled, but also correct lists of the educational establishments 
and various churches of all cities, towns, and villages, are given 
— a cursory glance, even, would show him the striking fact that, 
as far as the great centres of population were concerned, Catholic 
churches, educational establishments, and primar}'- schools were 
found in respectable numbers ; but many a page had to be 
turned when the reader came to places of lesser importance, to 
rural populations chiefly, before he met with any indication of 
the Catholic Church entering yet upon that large country do- 
main. This experience was encountered by the writer at the 
time, and caused him a moment of doubt. 

But beyond the reflection that, in matters of this kind (of the 
propagation of a doctrine or a creed), the first thing to be looked 
to is the centre, and that this, once mastered, will in course of 
time draw under its influence the outer circles ; that all things 
cannot be eifected at once, and the best thing to be done is to 
begin with the most important ; that, moreover, those statistics 
are often incorrect with respect to Catholic matters, whether 
from malicious design, or inadvertence, or want of knowledge, 
on subjects to which the compilers attached very little impor- 
tance, so that, if their statements be compared with Catholic 
official intelligence with regard to the same places, it will be 
found that many towns and villages which, according to the 
State Directories would seem to have been altogether forgotten 
by the Church, were actually in her possession, at least by 
periodical or occasional visits ; apart from all these considera- 
tions, there is one more important remark to be made, which 
includes in its bearing not only the present point of considera- 
tion, but, it may be said, the whole life of the Church from the 
beginning ; so that it is really a law of her birth, existence, and 
propagation. 

To illustrate our meaning, let us see how the Christian re- 
ligion first forced its way in heathen lands, throughout the whole 
Roman Empire, whether in its Oriental division where Greek was 
spoken, or among its Western, Latin-speaking populations. 

All the apostles fixed their sees in the largest or most im- 
portant cities of the ancient world ; St. Peter, imder the special 
guidance of Grod, taking possession of the capital and mistress of 
the whole. All the bishops ordained by the first apostles did the 
same by their direction ; and it is needless to add that the like 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 437 

law has been followed down to our own times whenever tlie 
Churcli has had to spread herself in a new country. 

In accordance with this plan, the cities of the Eoman world 
were the first to be evangelized, and their populations were con- 
verted with greater or less difficulty, according to the dispositions 
of the inhabitants, before almost an eifort had been made for the 
conversion of the rural populations, except as they happened to 
come in the way of the " laborers in the vineyard." Hence 
the result, so well known : heathenism remained rooted in the 
country for a much longer time than in the cities, so that the 
heathen were generally called pagans— jpagani — as if it were 
enough, when desiring to convey the intimation that a man was a 
worshipper of idols, to designate him as a dweller in the country.' 

And if the word " pagans " became synonymous with hea- 
thens in all European countries, it is a proof that the fact under- 
lying the name was universal wherever Christianity spread. It 
is known, moreover, that the dissemination of the Gospel in 
those rural districts was a work of centuries, and that, for nearly 
a thousand years after Christ, pagans were to be found in vil- 
lages of countries already Christian. 

The fundamental reason which governs and regulates these 
strange facts is that already given, namely, that Christianity — 
that is. Catholicity — is a groioth, and follows the laws of every 
thing that grows. True, its first increase is from without, by 
the conversion of infidels or erring men ; but even in that first 
stage of its existence, its growth is the faster where the numbers 
are greater ; hence its establishment invariably in large cities. 
But when it has passed beyond this first stage, it increases from 
within, like all growths, and the work is accomplished by the 
increase of families agglomerated in the same large towns. 

How true is it that the Church, once firmly planted^ in the 
midst of one of those agglomerations of men called cities, is 
sure in the end to invade the whole as " the yeast that leavens 
the whole ! " How easy is it to see that in the course of time 
those cities of the Union, among which a large proportion of 
Catholics is found, will belong almost exclusively to the true 
Church, if for no other reason . by the births in families, even 
supposing that the flow of immigration should finally cease ! If 
any one entertains some doubt on this point, he has only to 
consult the records containing the number of children baptized 
in her bosom, and compare it with the corresponding number in 
families still outside her. 

Hence the really astonishing fact, whose truth is recognized 
to-day in all the ISTorthern States along the Atlantic coast, that 
suddenly almost in the cities of New England, for instance, where 

* Another meaning is given to the word paganus by some writers ; but the old 
and common interpretation is the surest, and is confirmed by the best authorities. 



438 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

the number of Catholics was simply insignificant, they took an 
apparently nnacconntable prominence, and in the course of a few 
years, increasing steadily by birth as well as by immigration, the 
fact became the most curious though evident of the times, com- 
pletely changing the moral and social aspect of the country, and 
foretelling still greater changes to come. For, in the face of this 
wonderful increase to the ranks of Catholicity, appears another 
significant fact, but very different as to direction and energy — 
the gradual disappearance of names once prominent in those 
parts, and the daily narrowing area of Protestantism in the nu- 
merous sects of which it is composed. 

At the same time a great danger was averted (or at least won- 
derfully lessened and modified), from the whole country, by the 
settlement of those immigrants in the large centres of population. 
The manufacturing enterprises, which at that time assumed such 
vast developments in JSTorth America, received among their work- 
ers, men and women, a large proportion of Catholics, and the 
fear of future political and social peril to the peace and security 
of society at large could never, on this continent, reach the ex- 
treme point witnessed in Europe to-day. The great danger of 
the European future nestles principally in those vast hives of in- 
dustry with which that continent abounds. Our eyes have wit- 
nessed, our ears have been affrighted at those stupendous plans 
and projects in which, not only the great questions of capital and 
labor are involved, but the whole fabric of society is threatened 
with downfall. Religion, government, property, the family, the 
state — all those great principles and facts on which the security 
of mankind depends, enter now into the programme of artisans 
and laborers enlisted in gigantic and many-ramified secret socie- 
ties, while the whole world trembles at the awful aspect of this 
unwelcome phantom, that no government, however powerful, 
can lay. 

Suppose that on this continent the numerous bands of work- 
ing-men, so actively engaged everywhere in developing the re- 
sources of the country, should aim at extending their solicitude 
beyond their immediate and material welfare to the reformation 
and reorganization of mankind on a new basis ; and suppose that, 
with this aim in view, they should combine with those of Europe, 
and enter into an unholy compact with them, what hope or refuge 
would remain in the whole world for harmony, peace, justice, 
and happiness? And when the great upheaval, so generally ex- 
pected in Europe, and which sooner or later must take place, 
shall come to pass, where could those men fly, who cannot bui 
look upon those satanic schemes with horror? "Whereon this 
earth would be found a spot consecrated to the acknowledgment 
of the only social principles which can secure the real good of 
mankind, by rendering safe the stability of society ? 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 439 

It is our firm belief that tlie vast number of true children of 
the Church, occupied honestly and actively in the many factories 
of the E'orth, will, when the contest commences, even before it 
commences, when the question of connecting the " unions " of 
this country in a band of brotherhood with those of Europe 
shall be gravely mooted, make their voices loudly and unmis- 
takably heard on the right side. 

Enough has now been said on the locality chosen by prefer- 
ence as the dwelling-place of the Irish immigrants at the period 
under consideration. Let us now see those armies of new-comers 
at work. They have been called a missionary people ; let us see 
how they understand their "mission." 

In this new country every thing had to be done for the estab- 
lishment of religion, education, help for the poor, the aged, the 
infirm, on a lasting and sufiiciently broad basis. And, strange 
to remark, it was found that the previous persecutions they had 
undergone fitted them admirably for their work, not only by 
ffivino; them a strong: faith, the true foundation of Christian 
energy, but m a manner more curious, if not more effective. It 
fitted them to give money freely and abundantly, poor as they 
were ! One may smile incredulously at the conceit ; but it has 
become a most powerful and incontestable fact. 

Suppose the Irish never to have been persecuted in their own 
country : suppose that they had found there a benevolent gov- 
ernment to supply them with churches, schools, hosj^itals — homes 
for the poor — every thing that they, as Catholics, could desire. 
Suppose them to have been in a similar position with the French- 
men, Spaniards, and Italians, of those days, how bitterly would 
they have felt the inconvenience of building all these things up 
for themselves in their new homes with the labor of their own 
hands, by their own individual efibrts, unaided by the govern- 
ment! Their ardor would have been damped, their energy 
cramped, their inclination to give would have fallen far below 
the necessities of the time : for money was sorely needed — no 
niggard offerings, but immense sums. 

But happily — happily in the result, not in the fact — not only 
had the British Government never done any thing of the kind 
for them in their old home ; not only, on the contrary, had it 
been particularly careful to rob them of all the buildings and es- 
tates left by their ancestors for those great objects ; but, until 
very recently, the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1829, it 
had studiously and most persistently hindered them from doing 
voluntarily for themselves what it refused to do for them. There 
were numerous penal statutes enacted, in the course of two cen- 
turies, to prevent them from building churches, opening schools, 
erecting asylums and hospitals of their own, nay, from possess- 
ing consecrated graveyards for their dead. Thus did fanatic 



4A0 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

hatred pursue them even to the grave, and, as far as it could, be- 
yond the gates of death. Every one had to surrender the mor- 
tal remains of his relatives to the Protestant minister for burial ; 
as though what the government called its religion would snatch 
from them whatever it could lay hands on — the body at least 
since the soul had escaped and passed beyond its reach. 

But in their new country they found every thing altered. 
iNot only was prohibition of this kind utterly unknown, but 
there existed there the greatest amount of liberty ever enjoyed 
by man for acting in concert with* a religious, educational, or 
charitable object in view. 'No law devised by the old Greek 
republics, by the Roman fisc, by modern European intermeddling, 
was ever attempted in the country which with justice boasted of 
being the " asylum of the oppressed." Thus as the liberty so 
long denied to the Irish was at last opened up, as no barrier ex- 
isted to cramp and confine the natural generosity of their 
hearts, no sooner did they find that they might contribute as 
they chose to those great and holy objects, than they rushed at 
the chances ofiered them with what looked like recklessness. 

We hope that the reader may understand, from this, our 
meaning in saying that persecution had admirably fitted them 
for the mighty work that lay before them. It was the first time 
for centuries that they were allowed to give for such sacred pur- 
jDoses. 

Another thing which disposed them toward it was, the linger- 
ing fondness for the old customs of clanship, still harbored in their 
inmost soul, never entirely dead and ready to revive whenever 
an opportunity presented itself. There can be no doubt of this ; 
the great adjuration of the clansman to his chieftain — " Spend 
me, but defend me " — tended wonderfully to consecrate in their 
eyes the act of giving and giving constantly, as though their 
purse could never be exhausted. The chieftain has been replaced 
by the bishop, the priest, the educator ; the nobility has gone, 
but these have come ; and unconsciously perhaps, but none the 
less really, does this feeling lie at the bottom of their hearts, 
which are ever ready to burst out with the old expression, though 
in other form : " Spend me, eat me out, but help my soul, and 
save my children." 

This feeling has always run in the blood of the race. St. 
Paul long ago detected it in the Galatians, a branch of the Cel- 
tic tribes, when he wrote to them : " You received me as an angel 
of God, even as Christ Jesus. ... I bear you witness that, if it 
could be done, you would have plucked out your own eyes, and 
given them to me." — Epistle to the Galatians, iv. 15. 

Few, perhaps, have reflected seriously on the large sums re- 
quired for the establishment of the Catholic Church in so vast a 
country, with all her adjunct institutions ; therefore the stupen- 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 441 

dons result lias scarcely struck those wlio have witnessed and 
lived in the midst of it. The same is the case, though on a much 
smaller scale, with respect to the money sent back to Ireland by 
newly-arrived immigrants. People were aware that the Irish, 
women as well as men, were in the habit of forwarding drafts of 
one, two, or three pounds to their relatives and friends, but in 
such small amounts that the whole could not reach a very high 
figure. But when it came to be discovered that many banking 
associations were drawing large dividends from the operation, 
that new banks were continually being opened which looked to 
the profit to be derived from such transmission as their chief 
means of support, some curious people set to work collecting in- 
formation on the subject and instituting inquiries, when it was 
found that the aggregate sum amounted to millions, and would 
have become a serious item in the specie exports of the country, 
if what was transmitted did not in the main come back with 
those to whom it had been forwarded. 

So was it, but in much larger proportions with respect to the 
amounts annually spent in the purchase of real estate, the build- 
ing of churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, for the support of 
clergymen, school-teachers, clerks, officials, servants, which were 
called for all at once, over the surface of an extensive territory, 
for the service of hundreds of thousands of Catholics arriving 
yearly with the intention of settling permanently in the country. 
Could the full statistics be furnished, they would excite the sur- 
prise of all ; the few details which we would be enabled to gather 
from directories, newspapers, the reports of witnesses, and other 
sources, could give but a faint idea of the whole, and are conse- 
quently better omitted. 

One single observation will produce a more lasting impres- 
sion on the reader's mind than long statistics, and the enumera- 
tion of buildings and other undertakings. It is a fact, without 
the least tinge of exaggeration, that in the States of Pennsylva- 
nia, 'New Jersey, 'New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, "Wisconsin, and several other 
"Western States, nearly every clergyman, who had the care of a 
single parish before 1840, if alive to-day, could show in his for- 
mer district from ten to twenty parishes, each with its own pas- 
tor and church, now flourishing, and attached to each a much 
larger number of useful educational and charitable establishments 
than he could have boasted of in his original charge. Let one 
reflect on this, and then imagine to himself the sums requisite to 
purchase such an amount of real estate, for the erection of so 
many edifices, and for placing on an efficient footing so many 
difierent establishments. 

It is true that, to-day, a number of these institutions are still 
in debt ; but, if the list of what is actually paid for be made out, 



442 THE '"EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

and separated from what still remains indebted, the result would 
stand as a most wonderful fact. 

The question will naturally present itself, "How was it possi- 
ble for newly-arrived immigrants, who often landed without a 
penny in their pockets, to become all at once so easy in their 
circumstances as to be enabled to contribute, so generously and 
enormously, to so gigantic an enterprise ? " The details in reply 
to this might be given very simply and satisfactorily ; but, as it 
is a real work of God, who always acts simply and satisfac- 
torily, though in a manner worthy of the deepest attention and 
gratitude, it is proper to examine the question in all its bearings, 
and then even those who have seen, and can account for it very 
easily, will wonder, admire, and thank, the infinite Providence 
of God. 

First, it is certain that nowhere else in this world could it have 
been accomplished at all ; and nowhere else in this world has 
any thing like it been accomplished in a like manner. This may 
appear strange, but it is so ; let us see. 

All know how, in infidel countries, every thing necessary for 
the material help of Catholic missions must be supplied by the 
missionaries themselves ; that, in fact, they have not only their 
own support to consider, but, often also, the feeding, clothing, 
and education of the natives at their own expense. It is thus in 
all the barbarous countries of Asia, Africa, and the new conti- 
nent and islands in the South Sea. It is thus in the old, eifete, 
but once civilized countries of Asia, such as Syria, ITindostan, 
China, and others. In all those countries, money must come 
from without, not only to begin, but to continue, the work of 
evangelization, even when it has been going on for centuries. 
Details on this subject are unnecessary, the truth of what has 
just been said is so well known. 

In Christian countries, as in Europe, the various governments 
have so fiir contributed to the aid of the mission of Christianity, 
or have been gracious enough to allow such of the wealthy 
classes as were willing to take this task off their shoulders and set 
it up on their own, the lower classes being scarcely able to help 
toward it. What the case will be when the halcyon days come 
of the separation of Church and state, and the latter succeeds in 
the object at which it seems so earnestly striving now, of making 
the people godless dike itself, when the rich will no longer be 
willing to undertake this work, God only knows. But in those 
countries, as is well known, the government, formerly, and lat- 
terly up to quite recent times, or rich families by large contribu- 
tions laid down at once, have built churches, founded universities, 
colleges, and schools, erected hospitals and asylums ; founded — • 
such was the expression — all the religious, charitable, or literary 
institutions in existence. The "people" have scarcely efi'ected 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 443 

any thing in this direction, for the very good reason that they 
were unable to do so. 

In the United States alone, and among Catholics alone, it is 
" the people," the jjoor, who have taken and been able to take 
this matter into their own hands. 

That they — the Irish particularly — have done this, redounds 
to their honor, and it will receive its reward from God ; nay, has 
already in a great measure received it, by filling the land with 
the temples of their faith, with schools where their children are 
still taught to believe in God and grow up a moral race, and 
with the various Catholic asylums and institutions established for 
the glory of religion, or the comfort of those who are comfortless. 
That they have been, able to do this is owing to the unique, ex- 
ceptional, marvellous prosperity of the country which oftered 
them an asylum. And let us add with reverence that the coun- 
try owes this singular prosperity, which has been the source of 
so many blessings, to the designs of a loving Providence, who 
looks to the welfare of the whole of mankind, and has therefore 
endowed this young and gigantic nation with the necessary qual- 
ities of energy, activity, " go-aheaditiveness," as it is called, added 
to the fixed principle that every individual throughout these vast 
domains shall enjoy liberty, facility of acquiring a competency, 
and the right to make what use of it he pleases, as well as gen- 
erosity enough to applaud the one who devotes his surplus earn- 
ings to useful public undertakings. 

In no other country of the world has this been the case, and 
in no other country is it the case at the present moment. And, 
as the fact is mighty in its results, unprepared by man, unlooked 
for a hundred years ago, requiring for its fulfilment a thousand 
agencies far beyond the control of any man or inferior mind, fol- 
lowing the line of reasoning previously indicated, we ascribe, are 
constrained to ascribe, it all to the great infinite Mind, to God 
himself, and to him alone ! 

And now we turn to the workings of the Irish, and to a con- 
sideration of a few of the details. The first crying need was 
churches and orphan asylums : churches 'for the all-important 
worship of God ; orphan asylums to receive the numbers of chil- 
dren left homeless by the death of immigrants soon after their 
arrival, and who were immediately snatched up by the prose- 
lytizing sects. 

The style of architecture displayed in those first temples of 
the great God was homely indeed and humble. ]^evertheless, it 
might favorably compare with similar buildings erected by 
wealthy Protestant congregations. This fact alone is sufficient 
to convict Protestantism of want of faith, namely, that its ad- 
herents have never been struck by the thought that the majesty 
of God, if really felt, calls for a profusion of gifts on the part of 



4:4:4: THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

tliose who have superabundant, means. ]^ot that man can by 
his feeble exertions in that regard give adequate honor to the 
divine Omnipotence, but that love and gratitude are naturally- 
profuse in their demonstrations, and whoever loves ardently is 
ever ready to give all he has for the object of his love, even to 
the sacrifice of himself. The reflection that God is too great, and 
that it is useless, even presumptuous, to offer to him what must 
seem so infinitely mean in the light of his greatness, is but the 
flimsy pretext of an avaricious soul, and can be nothing but a lie, 
even in the eyes of those who utter it. From the beginning all 
truly religious nations have endeavored to make their external 
worship correspond with their internal feeling, and give expres- 
sion, as far as man can do, to their idea of the worth and majesty 
of God ; and that thought is a true measure of a religion ; for, 
when the external is but a cold and sordid worship, we may be 
sure that the internal corresponds ; and, when little or nothing 
is done in that way, it is clear that the heart feels not, and the 
mind is empty of true convictions and of faith. 

And what has been the invariable conduct of Protestant na- 
tions in this regard ? They became possessed of splendid 
churches built by their Catholic ancestors, and, after stripping 
them of all their beauty, they retained them as "preaching- 
halls " or " meeting-houses." The number of those who remained 
attached to a frigid and unattractive service gradually dimin- 
ished ; the edifices were found to be too large, and in many in- 
stances what had been the sanctuary, where art had exhausted 
itself in embellishment, partitioned off from the rest of the 
church, was kept for their dwindling congregations, while the vast 
aisles and roomy naves went slowly to ruin, or became deserted 
solitudes. As for the idea of building new religious edifices, the 
old ones were already too numerous for them, or if, as was not 
unfrequent, a new sect started into spasmodic life, and its vo- 
taries found it necessary to open a new " place of worship," the 
temple they erected to God generally took the form of a hired 
hall. Let the floor be carpeted and the benches covered with 
soft, slumber-inviting' cushions, the room wear a general air and 
aspect of comfort, the "acoustics" duly considered, so that the 
voice of the preacher might reach to the door and half-way to the 
galleries, and nothing more was required. The man who asked 
for something more solemn, and answering better to the cravings 
of a religious heart, would be laughed at as a visionary, if his 
person did not distil, to the keen-scented organs of these reli- 
gious folk, a strong flavor of " popery " and of " the man of sin." 

So that in the United States at the time spoken of, although 
the number of churches was extraordinary, because of the num- 
ber of sects, they were mere shells of buildings, capable of ac- 
commodating from three to eight hundred people (very few of 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. M5 

tlie latter capacity) ; and, althougli many of the memljers of the 
congregations who built them were rich men, adding to their 
wealth daily, one seldom encountered any of the structures, then 
common, showing much more than four walls, enclosing four lines 
of clumsy pews. 

Consequently, the Catholic Church had no reason to blush 
by comparison at the poverty of her children ; nay, the extreme 
simplicity of the edifices raised by them was in keeping with 
every thing around, and what they did in the hurry of the 
moment, with the scanty means at their disposal, at least might 
vie with what wealthy Protestants had done deliberately with 
all the leisure and wealth at their command. 

Already, even at that epoch, in the centre of Catholicity in 
this country, the love of the true worshipper of God began to 
display something of that feeling which is naturally alive in the 
heart of the sincerely religious man ; and the Cathedral of 
Baltimore, long since left so far behind by other monuments of 
true devotion, created throughout the country a genuine excite- 
ment and admiration, when its doors were first opened for the 
worship of God. It was clear, from the universal acclaim of the 
people, non-Catholics included, that at least one class of men in 
the country had a true idea of what was worthy of God in his 
worship, and what was worthy of themselves in their worship 
of him. 

But, though, with some rare exceptions, the architecture dis- 
played in those edifices constructed by the children of the true 
Church was poor indeed, the number of those which were com- 
menced and so speedily completed and devoted to their holy use 
was so extraordinary, that it is doubtful if the annals of Catholi- 
city have ever recorded the same thing occurring on the same 
scale, in the same extent of country. If the ecclesiastical history 
of the United States ever comes to be written, it is to be hoped 
that, in the archives of the various episcopal sees, authentic docu- 
ments have been preserved, which may furnish future writers 
with comprehensive statistics on the subject, that the posterity 
of the noble-hearted men and women who undertook and carried 
out, with such a wonderful success, so arduous a task, may be 
stimulated to religious exertion of the same kind by the memory 
of what their forefathers have accomplished. The reflection al- 
ready suggested by another idea may serve here likewise, and be 
usefully repeated. If, in the course of twenty-five years, over 
the surface of at least ten of the largest ISTorthern States, every 
clergyman who, at the beginning of that period, ofificiated in a 
very small church, is, to-day, supposing him living, gladdened 
by the sight of ten to twenty collaborators, with a corresponding 
number of newly-built churches, it is easy to judge of the vast- 
ness of the effort made by the greatness of the undertaking and 



446 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

the unexampled success with wliich God has been pleased to crown 
it. The other States of the Union are omitted here, not because 
the Catholics residing in them were then idle, but because, their 
growth being less remarkable, the external result could not be so 
striking. Nfvertheless, the actual increase among them would 
compare favorably with that of other growing Catholic countries. 

Could details, at this present time, only be gathered from all 
the States, in the area referred to, the vast diftusion of Catholi- 
city by the influence of immigration would come home to us 
with far greater force, as -would the conception of the corre- 
sponding work demanded of the immigrants for the creation of all 
the objects of worship, charity, and education. Let the reader 
look to what is related in the " Life of Bishop Loras," who was at 
that time charged with the foiinding of religion in Iowa and 
Minnesota. It will at the same time bring under our notice the 
march of the Irish toward the West, after having seen them 
solidly established in the Atlantic States. 

" He was consecrated at Mobile by Bishop Portier, assisted 
by Bishop Blanc, of New Orleans, on December 10, 1837. His 
diocese was a vast region unknown to him. The unfinished 
Church of St. Raphael, at Dubuque, was the only Catholic church 
in the Territory, and the Rev. Sam. Mazzuchelli, its pastor, was 
the only Catholic priest. The Catholic population of Dubuque 
was about three hundred. . . . But there must be, thought the 
new bishop, som^c members of the flock in distant, isolated, and 
unfrequented localities, who were in danger of wandering from 
the faith ; besides, the future waves of population would certain- 
ly set in toward this fine expanse of meadow, prairie, and 
forest. . . . "With prudent foresight he purchased land .... 
three acres at Dubuque; later, St. Joseph's Prairie, one mile 
square, near the same city. . . . A valuable property was acquired 
in Davenport, on the Mississippi, with the view of applying the 
revenue from it to the support of the missions. 

" To his regret he saw large numbers of the European immi- 
grants tarrying in the Atlantic cities, where want, sickness, and 
crime, beset their path, and he became deeply interested in giv- 
ing to this worthy population the more healthful and vigorous 
direction of the "West. . . . Articles were prepared and published, 
setting forth the attractions of the country. . . . An immense 
correspondence, with persons in this country and in Europe, re- 
sulted from the well-known interest Bishop Loras took in these 
subjects. . . . He undertook the settlement of colonies. . . . Ger- 
mans in New Yienna, in 1846 . . . Irish on the Big-Maquokety. 
. . . He organized them in congregations, and commenced in 
person the work of building for them churches. . . . establishing 
schools and academies, laboring for the temporal and eternal wel- 
fare of the people," 



THE "EXODUS" AIs^D ITS EFFECTS. 447 

Thus did the tide of Catholic population "begin to flow into 
Iowa and Minnesota, to be brought under the influence of the 
Church as soon as it arrived. 

Meanwhile associations were being formed in the East, in 
New York chiefly, for the purpose of inducing Irishmen to go 
west as far as Illinois, and the Territories west of the Mississippi. 
Several zealous clergymen placed themselves at the head of the 
movement. Their main object was to rescue the Catholic immi- 
grants from the dangers surrounding them in large cities, and to 
make farmers of them. We have seen why these plans, though 
prompted by the best intentions, failed to succeed ; their imme- 
diate efliect was to give a fresh impetus to the great movement 
westward, and, by relieving the Atlantic coast of a sudden excess 
of population, to extend the Church along the line marked out by 
Providence toward the coast of the Pacific. 

At the same time, on the very shores of that vast ocean, Cali- 
fornia was receiving directly from Europe large detachments of 
the voluntary exiles who were then leaving Ireland in a compact 
body in the full tide of the " Exodus." The Catholic Church was 
thus early taking up a commanding position at the extreme 
point whither the main " army " was tending, and soon to arrive 
with the completion of the great Pacific Kailroad. 

The following extract, taken from the "Life of Bishop Loras," 
will be sufficient to give an idea of the rapid increase of the 
Catholic population in the West, in consequence of the workings 
of so many agencies employed by God's providence for his own 
holy ends : 

"In 1855, the Catholic population of Iowa increased one 
hundred and fifty per centum in a single year. It seems almost 
incredible to relate, that the churches and stations, provided for 
their accommodation, increased in the same time nearly one hun- 
dred per centum. The Catholic population reported in 1855 was 
twenty thousand, and the churches and stations fifty-two ; the 
Catholic population in 1856 was rated at forty-nine thousand, 
and the churches and stations at ninety-seven. 

"Bishop Loras commenced his episcopate (in 1837) with one 
church, one priest, and the only Catholic population reported, 
that of Dubuque, was three hundred. In 1851, Minnesota was 
taken from his diocese, yet in 1858, the year of his death, the 
diocese of Dubuque alone possessed one hundred and seven 
priests, one hundred and two churches and stations, and a Catho- 
lic population of fifty-five thousand." 

There can be little doubt that, if similar statistics were drawn 
up for all the Western States of the Union during a correspond- 
ing period, they would give very similar results ; and it is only 
by reflecting and pondering over such astonishing facts as these, 
that the mind can come to grasp the idea of the magnitude of 



us THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

the work assigned by Providence to tlie Irish race. This, we 
have no hesitation in saying, will form one of the most remark- 
able features of the future ecclesiastical history of the age, and 
will appear the more clearly when all the consequences of this 
stupendous movement shall stand out fully developed, so as to 
strike the eyes of all. 

It may be well to reflect a moment upon the activity dis- 
played by that zealous hive of busy immigrants, who, soon after 
landing, when the thoughts of other men would have been exclu- 
sively and, as men would think, naturally, occupied by the thou- 
sand necessities arising from a new establishment on a foreign 
soil — while not neglecting those necessities — found time to 
enter heart and soul into projects set on foot everywhere for 
buying up landed property, making contracts with builders, 
supervising the work already going on, attending above all to 
the collection of money, forming lists of subscribers to that end, 
"^dsiting round about for the same purpose, and attending to the 
fulfilment of promises sometimes made too hastily, or with too 
sanguine an expectation of being able to accomplish what in the 
future was never realized to the extent expected. 

But, much sooner than might have been hoped, the desire, so 
congenial to the Catholic heart, of beholding more suitable 
dwellings erected to the honor of God and to the reception of 
his Divine presence, was fulfilled, or aroused, rather, in a quar- 
ter least expected, and consequently more in accordance with 
the (to man) mysterious ways of Providence. The sudden 
increase of the Church in England, in consequence of remarkable 
conversions and principally of the little-remarked flow of emi- 
grants thither from the sister isle, induced some pious and 
wealthy English Catholics, now that they found themselves free 
to follow their inclinations unmolested, to devote their means to 
the construction of churches worthy of the name. The splendid 
structures, now the lifeless monuments of the old faith, which 
their fathers had raised, rested in the hands of the spoiler, and 
they could not worship, save privately and inwardly, at the 
shrine of Thomas of Canterbury, or before the tomb of Edward 
the Confessor. Yet were their eyes ever aflclicted with the pres- 
ence of those noble edifices, that resembled the solemn tombs of 
a buried faith, yet still cast their lofty spires heavenward, while 
the structure beneath them covered acres of ground with the 
most profuse and elaborate architecture. They looked around 
them for a builder, who might raise them such again. But there 
was none to be found capable of conceiving, much less building 
such vast fabrics as the old churches, which owed their existence 
not to the ingenuity of a designer, but to the inspired enthu- 
siasm of a living faith. Nevertheless, a man, full of energy and 
reverence and love for the beauty of the house of God, came 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. M9 

forward at tlie very moment he was wanted. Welby Pugin soon 
became known to the world, and was still in the full vigor of his 
enterprising life, when all over the American Continent the im- 
migrants were engaged in satisfying the first cravings of their 
hearts, and covering the country with unpretending edifices 
crowned, at least, by the symbol of salvation. Among them 
arrived pupils of Pugin, who speedily found Irish hearts to re- 
spond to theirs, and Irish purses ready to carry their designs 
into execution. 

There is no need of going into details. Puritan ISTew Eng- 
land even has seen its chief cities one by one adorned with 
true temples of God, and its small towns embellished by stone 
edifices devoted to Catholic worship, their form pleasing to the 
eye, and their interior spacious enough, at least temporarily, for 
the constantly-increasing congregations. But perhaps the most 
remarkable result of all has been the sudden zeal which sprang 
up among the sectarians themselves, who had hitherto expressed 
such contempt for any thing of the kind, of outstripping the 
Catholics in Christian architecture. They have even gone so far 
as to discover that tbe cross, the emblem of man's salvation, is 
not such, a very inappropriate ornament, after all, to the summit 
of a Christian temple, and that the statues of angels and of 
saints are possessed of a certain beauty. So that what in their 
eyes hitherto had borne the semblance of idolatry — such, accord- 
ing to themselves, was their way of looking at it — suddenly 
became an aesthetic feeling, if not an act of true devotion. 

And, singularly enough, it was just at the time when the 
erection of so many episcopal sees necessitated the building of 
cathedrals, that the thought, natural to the Catholic heart, of 
making the house of God a place of beauty and magnificence, 
could begin to be realized by the arrival of true artists and the 
increasing wealth of the Catholic body. 

It is in the true Church only that the meaning of a cathedral 
can be fully grasped. Those sects which acknowledge no bishops 
and deride the title certainly can form no conception of it, and 
even those who imagine that they have a bishop at their head, 
have so little idea of what are true episcopal functions, of the 
greatness of the position which a see occupies, of the importance 
of the place where it is established, that in their eyes the pretended 
dignitary can scarcely rank much higher, either in position or 
degree, than a wealthy parish minister, and the church wherein 
" his lordship " officiates is very much the same as an ordinary 
parish church. If in England a show of dignitaries is attached 
to each of those establishments, it is merely a form well calcu- 
lated to impress the solemn Anglo-Saxon character ; but even 
that very form Avould scarcely have existed were it not one of 
those few semblances of the Catholic reality which the wily 
39 



450 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFEECTS. 

founders of tlie Protestant religion found it convenient to retain 
for tlie purpose hinted at. The Catholic Church alone can under- 
stand what a cathedral ought to be. 

This is not the occasion to enter upon an explanation of all the 
meanings and uses of a cathedral, least of all to penetrate the 
sublime mystical signihcance embodied in its conception. Here 
it is enough to insist upon the least important, yet most sensible 
and more easily-recognized object of the building, which is, not 
simply the seat of honor of the first pastor of the diocese, who is 
a successor of the apostles, but likewise the place of adoration 
and sacrifice common to all the faithful of the diocese. Strictly 
speaking, no special congregation is attached to it ; but it is the 
spiritual home of all the faithful; its doors are 0]3en to all the 
congregations of that part. There the common father resides 
and officiates ; there his voice is generally to be heard ; there he 
is to be found surrounded by all those whose duty it is to assist 
him in his sublime functions. When he apjDears in any parish 
church, the clergy of that special temple are his only attendants, 
unless others flock thitherto do him honor. But the cathedral 
is his fixed seat and permanent abode ; there the appointed dig- 
nitaries of the diocese find their allotted places, and there alone 
are his ofiicers permanently attached to him by their functions. 

Hence it is the cardinal church upon which the whole spirit- 
ual edifice called the diocese is hinged. Therefore is it the nat- 
ural resort of the wdiole flock, as well as of the pastor himself. 
This will explain the vastness of those edifices w^hich strike us 
■with wonder in old established Catholic countries. In accord- 
ince with their primitive intention and purpose, there should be 
in them standing and kneeling room for all who have a right to 
enter there ; and it is purely on account of the impossibility of 
exactly fulfilling this intent that the edifice is allowed to be 
built smaller. We are thus enabled to understand why the 
great temple which is the centre-spot of Catholic worship can 
contain only fifty thousand worshippers at a time, and why many 
other sacred edifices consecrated to episcopal functions can find 
room for no more than twenty or thirty thousand. 

But even those structures, which strike with wonder the puny 
miuds of this " advanced " age, have consumed centuries in their 
construction, and the number and the faith of those who raised 
them were, we may say, exceptional in the life of the Church. 
There were no dissenters in those daj^s ; and, as all were pos- 
sessed of a firm faith, all labored with a common will and con- 
tributed with a common pleasure to their construction. 

Times having changed for the w^orse, the same ardor and 
generosity could not be looked for ; but something at least was 
required which should give some idea of the old splendor and 
vastness. So, throughout all the new dioceses projects were set 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 451 

on foot for raising real cathedrals, whicli should quite overshadow 
the buildings hitherto known by that name. 

Thus, a cathedral was promised to ISTew York City, three 
hundred and thirty feet in length, and one hundred and seventy- 
two in breadth across the transept ; while that of Philadelphia 
was soon completed, and all might gaze on the massive and ma- 
jestic edifice, by the side of which every other public building in 
a city containing eight hundred thousand souls appeared dwarf- 
ish and unsubstantial. Boston was soon to behold within its 
walls a Catholic cathedral, three hundred and sixty-four feet 
long, and one hundred and forty broad in the transept, though 
the same diocese was already filled with large stone churches, 
built solely by the resources of the immigrants. 

The Archbishop of JSTew York, when preaching the sermon 
at the laying of the foundation-stone of this edifice in 1867, was 
able to say in the presence of many who might have borne per- 
sonal testimony to the truth of his w^ords : " There are those 
most probably within the sound of my voice who can remember 
when there was but one Catholic church in Boston, and when 
that sufficed, or had to suffice, not alone for this city, but for all 
New England ; and how is it now ? Churches and institutions 
multiplied, and daily continuing to multiply on every side, in 
this city, throughout this State, in all or nearly all the cities and 
States of ISTew England ; so that at this day no portion of our 
country is enriched with them in greater proportionate number, 
none where they have grown up to a more fiourishing condition, 
none where finished with more artistic skill, or presenting monu- 
ments of more architectural taste and beauty." 

Had any one predicted this to the good and gifted Bishop 
Cheverus, when leaving America for France, he might perhaps 
have not refused altogether to believe or hope for it, but he 
would certainly have pronounced it a real and undoubted miracle 
of God, to happen within a century. 

But the Archbishop of New York, in that same sermon, 
pointed out the true cause, when he attributed it to " God's 
blessing," and to " the never-ceasing tide of immigration that 
has been and still continues to be setting toward the American 
shores." 

The history of the Church certainly contains many a page 
where the traces of the finger of God are clearly marked ; nay, 
we may say that such traces are apparent throughout, as we 
know that God alone could have originated, spread out, sup- 
ported, multiplied, and perpetuated the Church through all the 
centuries of her existence ; but it is doubtful if in all her annals 
a single page shows where the action of Providence is more 
clearly visible, as it was least expected, than in the few facts just 
cursorily and briefly enumerated. 



452 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EEFEOTS. 

Yet have we mentioned only a part of the work to which 
the poor immigrants were called to contribute immediately after 
their arrival, and at the vastness of which they never murmured 
nor lost heart, as though a greater burden had been laid upon 
them than human shoulders could endure. 

The worship of God and the care of souls were the first 
things to be attended to, and, with these, other necessary objects 
were not to be neglected. There was the care of the poor, 
whom the Church of Christ was the first public body to think 
of relieving ; the tending of the sick in hospitals, where their 
own clergy might not orily have access, but where it should be 
made sure that the management be one of true Christian charity 
and tenderness ; the orphan children, always so numerous under 
circumstances like those of the present, were to be saved from 
falling into the hands of sectarians, and being educated by them, 
as were formerly the Catholic wards, in hatred of their own 
faith, and of the customs, habits, and modes of thought of their 
ancestors. This last great and incalculable source of loss to the 
Church was to be put a stop to at once, if not completely — for 
that was then impossible — at least as perfectly as zeal, gener- 
osity, and true love of souls, could elfect. All these works 
required money, an incalculable amount ; as it was not in a single 
city, not in a small particular State, but throughout the whole 
Union, through as many cities as it contains, that the undertak- 
ing was to be straightway set on foot and simultaneously acted 
upon. 

]^or was the question one of the erection of buildings merely, 
but also of the support of an immense number of inmates, and 
of their constant support without a single d^y's intermission. 
"Who can calculate the sums required for such immediate and 
most pressing needs ? 

In a nation where Christianity has been long established, 
taxes imposed upon all for the constructing, repairing, maintain- 
ing, and carrying on so many and such large establishments are 
easily collected. For all are bound by law to contribute to such 
purposes, and the question generally reduces itself merely to a 
continuance of the support of institutions long standing, and 
which can be no longer in need of the large disbursements 
necessary at the first period of their existence. But here it was 
a question of providing, without any other law than that of love, 
without the help of any other tax-gatherer than the voluntary 
collector, for all those necessities at once, including the vast out- 
lays requisite for the first establishment of those institutions, 
and imposing, by that very act, the necessity and duty of sup- 
porting forever all the inmates gathered together at the cost of 
so much care and expense, within those walls consecrated to 
religion and charity. The government had no share whatever 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 453 

in it ; too liappy were they at the government interposing no 
obstacle to its carrying out ! That Avas all they asked for on its 
part — ^non-interferen ce. 

On this subject, Mr. Magiiire remarks justly, without, how- 
ever, bringing the matter of expenditure into sufficient promi- 
nence : 

" For the glorious Church of America many nations have done 
their part. The sacred seed first planted by the hand of the 
chivalrous Spaniard has been watered by the blood of the gen- 
erous Gaul ; to the infant mission the Englishman brought his 
steadfastness and resolution, the Scotchman, in the northeast, his 
quiet firmness, . . . the Irishman his faith, the ardor of his faith. 
And, as time rolled on, and wave after wave of immigration 
brought with it more and more of the precious life-blood of Europe, 
from no country was there a richer contribution of piety and zeal, 
of devotion and self-sacrifice, than from, that advanced outpost of 
the Old World, whose western shores first break the fury of the 
Atlantic ; to whose people Providence appears to have assigned 
a destiny grand and heroic^of carrying the civilization of the 
Cross to remote lands and distant nations. What Ireland has 
done for the American Church, every bishop, every priest, can 
tell. Throughout the vast extent of the Union there is scarcely 
a church, an academy, a hospital, or a refuge, in which the 
piety, the learning, the zeal, the self-sacrifice, of the Irish — of the 
priest or the professor, of the Sisters of every order or denomina- 
tion—are not to be traced ; there is scarcely an ecclesiastical 
seminary for English-speaking students in which the great ma- 
jority of those now preparing for the service of the sanctuary do 
not belong, if not by birth, at least by blood, to that historic land 
to Avhich the grateiul Church of past ages accorded the proud 
title. Insula Sanctorum.''^ 

To this may be added the remark that it is still further be- 
yond doubt that all the establishments mentioned, almost with- 
out one exception, owe their existence, at least partially, and 
very often entirely, to the generous and never-failing contribu- 
tions of the Irish. 

The Eev. C. G. White, in his " Sketch of the Origin and 
Progress of the Catholic Church in the United States of Ameri- 
ca," which is appended to the translation of Darras's " History 
of the Catholic Church," says still more positively : 

" In recording this consoling advancement of Catholicity 
throughout the United States, especially in the JSTorth and West, 
justice requires us to state that it is owing in a great measure to 
the faith, zeal, and generosity of the Irish people who have immi- 
grated to these shores, and their descendants. We are far from 
wishing to detract from the merit of other nationalities ; but the 
vast influence which the Irish population has exerted in extend- 



454 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

ing tlie domain of the Chiircli is well deserving of notice, because 
it conveys a very instructive lesson. The wonderful history of 
the Irish nation has always forced upon us the conviction that, 
like the chosen generation of Abraham (previous to their rejec- 
tion of the Messiah, of course), they were destined, in the designs 
of Providence, to a special mission for the preservation and prop- 
agation of the true iaith.. This faith, so pure, so lovely, so gen- 
erous, displays itself in every region of the globe. To its vitality 
and energy must we attribute, to a very great extent, the rapid 
increase in the number of churches and other institutions which 
have sprung up and are still springing up in the United States, 
and to the same source are the clergy mainly indebted for their 
support in the exercise of their pastoral ministry. It cannot be 
denied, and we bear a cheerful testimony to the fact, that hun- 
dreds of clergymen, Avho are laboring for the salvation of souls, 
would starve, and their efforts for the cause of religion would be 
in vain, but for the generous aid they receive from the children 
of Erin, who know, for the most part, how to appreciate the ben- 
efits of religion, and who therefore joyfully contribute of their 
worldly means to purchase the spiritual blessings M^hich the 
Church dispenses." 

To this we may add that what Mr. White so expressly states 
of the generous support given by the Irish people to the clergy 
is equally true when extended to the thousand inmates of orphan 
asylums, reformatories, schools, convents, and of all the charita- 
ble institutions generally which are specially fostered by the 
Church for the common good of humanity. To quote only one 
fact recorded in a note to Mr. Maguire's book, a Sister of Mercy 
tells us what the Irish working-class has done for the order in 
Cincinnati : " The convent, schools, and House of Mercy, in 
which the good works of our Institute are progressing, were pur- 
chased in 1861 at a considerable outlay. This, together with the 
repairs, alterations, furnishing, etc., was defrayed by the work- 
ing-class of Irish people, who have been and are to us most de- 
voted, and by their generosity have enabled ns up to the present 
time to carry out successfully our works of mercy and charity." 

It may be stated, without fear of contradiction, that the same 
thing might be asserted by the superior of almost every Catholic 
establishment in the country, were an opportunity afforded them 
of coming forward in like manner. 

All this is well known to those who are in the least ac- 
quainted with the history and workings of those institutions ; 
but very little noise is made about it, according to the rule of 
the Gospel which recommends us to do good in such a manner 
that " the left hand may not know what the right hand doeth." 
Nothing is more Christian than such silent approval, and the 
eternal reward, which must follow, is so overwhelmingly great 



THE "EXODUS" AI^D ITS EFFECTS. 455 

that the applause of the world may well be disregarded. But 
as constant good offices are apt to beget indifference in those 
who benefit most by them, there are not wanting some good 
people who seem to labor under the impression that really the 
Irish deserve scarcely any thanks ; that every thing which they 
do comes so naturally from them, it is only what one could 
expect as a matter of course, and that, it being nothing more, 
after all, than their simple duty, it becomes a very ordinary 
thing.' 

It may be superfluous to say that if all this was expected 
from them, and if it be, as it really is, after all only a very 
ordinary thing on their part, this fact is precisely what makes 
them a most extraordinary people, as expectations of this nature 
which may be most natural are of that peculiar kind of " great 
expectations " magnificent in prospect, but very delusive in fact ; 
and certainly they would not be looked for as a matter of course 
in any other nation. Let any one reflect on the few details here 
furnished, let him add others from his own information, and the 
whole thing will appear, as it truly is, most wonderful, and only 
to be explained by the great and merciful designs of God, as Dr. 
White has just indicated — designs intrusted on this occasion to 
faithful servants whose generous hearts and pure souls opened 
up to the mission intrusted to them, to its glorious fulfilment 
so far, and to a greater unfolding still in time to come. 

In order to understand, as ought to be understood, more 
fully the weight of the burden they so cheerfully undertook to 
bear, a few reflections on the subject of religious and charitable 
institutions will not be considered out of place. 

The Romans — those master-organizers, who reduced to a 
perfect system every branch of government, legislation, war, 
and religion — never abandoned, never intrusted to the initiative 
of the people, the care of providing the means for any thing 
which the state ought to supply. The public religious establish- 
ments were all endowed, the colleges of the priests enjoyed 
large revenues, and the expenses of worship were supplied from 
the same source. To the fisc in general belonged the duty of 
supporting the armories, the courts of law, and the large estab- 
lishments provided for the comfort and instruction of the peo- 
ple, the baths, libraries, and regular amusements. The private 
munificence of emperors, great patricians, and conquerors, under- 
took to supply occasional shows of an extraordinary character in 
the theatres, amphitheatre, and the circus. 

There was no room left for charity in the whole plan. In- 
deed, the meaning of that word was unknown to them ; for it 
cannot be properly applied to the regular distribution of money 
or cereals to the lilebs ; as this was one of those generosities 
which are necessary, and was only practised in order to keep the 



456 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EEEECTS, 

lower orders of citizens in idle content and out of miscliief, as 
you would a wild animal wliich you dare not cliain : you must 
feed him. Tlie really poor, tlie slaves, the maimed, the helpless, 
were left to their hard fate, they being apparently unworthy of 
pity because they excited no fear. 

Yet the system was fruitful in its results. As soon as Chris- 
tianity was seated on the throne, nothing was easier than to 
transfer the immense sums contributed by regular funds, or 
which were the product of taxes, from one object to another ; 
and thus the Christian clergy and churches w^ere supported as 
had been the colleges and temples of the pagan priests, by the 
revenues derived from large estates attached to the various 
corporations. Thus did Constantine and his successors become 
the munificent benefactors of the Church in Eome and through- 
out the whole empire. 

Meanwhile, the " collections of money " among the faithful, 
which were first organized, as we read in the epistles of the 
apostles, and afterward systematized still better in Rome under 
the first popes, soon grew into disuse, at least to the extent to 
which they once prevailed ; the new charitable institutions, such 
as the care of the poor, of widows and orphans, being under- 
taken by the Church at large, while the expenses of the whole 
w^ere defrayed by the revenues accruing from the donations of 
princes, or the bequests of wealthy Christians. 

The consequence was that, throughout the whole Christian 
world, all religious, literary, and charitable institutions enjoyed 
large revenues, and there was no need of applying to the gen- 
erosity of the common people for contributions. 

After the successful invasion of the barbarians, the same sys- 
tem held good ; and history records how richly endowed were 
the churches built, the monasteries founded, the universities and 
colleges opened, by the once ferocious Franks, Germans, or 
l^orthmen even, tamed and subdued by the precepts and prac- 
tices of Christianity. 

We know how the immense wealth, which had been devoted 
to such holy purposes by the wise generosity of rulers or rich 
nobles, became in course of time an eyesore and object of envy 
to the worldly, and that the chief incentive to the " Reformers " 
for doing their work of " reformation " thoroughly was the pros- 
pect of the golden harvest to be reaped by the destruction of the 
Catholic Church. 

But the very large amounts required to satisfy the aspirations 
introduced into the heart of humanity, by the religion of Christ, 
may give us an adequate idea of what Christian civilization 
really costs. It is foolish to imagine a sane man really believing 
that those generous founders of pious institutions, who devoted, 
by gift or bequest, such large estates and revenues to the various 



THE "EXODUS" xiXD ITS EFFECTS. 457' 

objects of religion, science, and charity, lavished their wealth to 
no purpose, and literally deprived themselves and their posterity 
of what Avas their own for the purpose of supporting in idleness 
useless drones and corrupt people. Despite all that their de- 
spoilers have said, all those great public establishments worked 
an infinite good to society, and their sudden disappearance at the 
time of the Reformation created a void which has never since 
been filled by all the poor-laws and state institutions ever de- 
vised. 

That mismanagement may have crept into some of those 
funded charities is very possible ; gross mismanagement is not 
unknown in many of the public charities in England, particularly, 
even in these sharp days ; a reform, if properly carried out, would 
doubtless have done good in many cases ; but destruction is a 
poor mode of reform, and appropriating to one's self what had 
been solemnly devoted to the good of all is scarcely generosity, 
and cannot well be styled even just retaliation. 

But when we reflect further, that in all European states, pre- 
vious to the Reformation, a large percentage of all lands and real 
estate, in addition to tithes, was consecrated to the service of reli- 
gion, science, and charity, we may form some idea of what lay 
before the immigrants when they began their work in right ear- 
nest, but with almost empty hands. 

It may be objected that they undertook too much ; that good, 
substantial, but not too expensive churches, would have sufliced, 
as they were required, inasmuch as the new Constitution of the 
country had decreed the total separation of Church and state : 
but, as the people on all sides contributed by tax to educational 
and charitable purposes in the shape of public schools, asylums, 
and hospitals, the new-comers would have done well to fall in 
with the spirit of the country, and take in common with all 
others their due share of the public bounty, particularly as they 
were called upon to contribute toward them by duties and taxa- 
tion. 

The question of churches, expensive or inexpensive, may 
pass : what has been said on the subject of cathedrals may suf- 
fice to show that " good, substantial church-edifices," as they 
are called, do not and ought not satisfy the aspirations of the 
Catholic heart. A word only is required on those other exten- 
sive and expensive establishments, without, however, entering 
upon the " school question," which by this time may be consid- 
ered settled for all true and intelligent Catholics. 

As usual, we merely confine ourselves to a few desultory 
remarks, some of which may tend to give a new direction to a 
discussion which our present purpose does not allow us to enter 
upon at length. 

It is time for all to know, and know sufficiently, why it was 



458 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

impossible for Catholics to be satisfied in conscience witli what 
tlie country did and provided for all in the shape of schools, 
asylums, refuges, hospitals, etc. ; but, as the great bulk of non- 
Catholics in this country can scarcely form a right idea of the 
true Catholic feeling on this point, and as, even among church- 
members, all do not seem to have thoroughly understood the sub- 
ject and grasped the difficulty, we step aside a moment to devote 
a few words to it ; without, however, losing sight, for a single 
instant, of the question which really occupies us — the incredible 
expense undergone by the Catholic body in the United States 
under the initiative and guidance of their regular] y-aj)poin ted 
pastors. 

At the moment of making a few reflections on this point, it 
is for the writer an agreeable duty to state his conviction that, 
as far as the great majority of the legislators and simple citizens 
are concerned, it was never their intent to drag, whether by fair 
means or foul, the posterity of Irishmen into the ranks of heresy 
or infidelity. Unhappily, all cannot be acquitted of that intent, 
and it is well known that extensive organizations did and do 
exist for that very purpose ; yet, assuredly, the great majority 
of the nation never joined in that unholy consj^iracy, and hon- 
estly meant to be fair and impartial to all. 

But events anterior to the Constitution, and a long-established 
order of things of which they were not sufficiently aware, and 
which had probably never attracted their attention, rendered 
necessary the step taken by the priests and people, and com- 
pelled them to charge themselves with a burden, whose weight 
can only be fully known to those who are well versed in the 
whole subject. 

"With regard to anterior events, it is needless to remark that 
the English colonies of JSTorth America were subject to the gen- 
eral laws of the mother-country, and thus the penal enactments 
against Catholics were, as previously seen, in full force on both 
sides of the Atlantic, The country was thoroughly Protestant, 
and all establishments of city, county, and State, were under 
Protestant rule, which, as was also seen, was duly enforced. 
Catholics, who were thrown upon their charity, had either to 
conceal their religion or to " conform." 

AYhen, with the independence of the country. Catholics re- 
gained their rights, it may be said that those rights did not ex- 
tend beyond the theory, and that, as has been justly remarked 
and proved, the Federal Government alone adopted "liberal" 
principles, the States being left with full power to adopt other 
rules for State establishments. Hence, " disabilities " still con- 
tinued in many places, and are not yet even entirely abolished. 
At all events, the anterior state of things could scarcely be ex- 
j)ected to disappear in a day ; and it was clear, at first sight, that 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EEEECTS. 459 

a very long time would be required for it to, as it were, wear 
itself away, and drop out of sight altogether : so that, the Cath- 
olics being so few at the end of last century, and at the begin- 
ning of this, many individual cases of oppression could not fail 
to be of daily occurrence, in places, particularly, where the popu- 
lation remained ardently, that is, fiercely, Protestant. It is not 
an easy thing, indeed it is utterly impossible, to change sud- 
denly the ideas, traditions, customs of a whole country. Such 
a change must be left to the wearing friction of time, and the 
slow progress of justice, which, like Prayer, in Homer, is lame 
at first, and slow to reach the footstool of Jove's throne. 

Again, the poor immigrants, who were accustomed, nay, com- 
pelled, to bow down under such tyranny at home, could not be 
expected suddenly to stand up and insist boldly on their just 
claims to the privileges of citizens, when, as yet, they scarcely 
knew what those precise privileges were. The ear of his priest, 
his chief, his only organ, in fact, could not often be reached ; 
and, even if he could pour his grievances into it, the voice of his 
protector was too often powerless in prejudiced communities, 
which were ruled for the most part by prejudiced officials, accus- 
tomed to esteem as their chief right what in reality was only the 
j[)Ower of oppression. 

Thus, if an Irishman on his arrival was compelled through 
sickness to seek refuge in a hospital, or, worse still, in a poor- 
house, he knew that for him there were no rites of religion, Ms 
religion, to console him, even at the hour of death; and, that in 
the event of his dying there, his children would be brought up 
in hatred of the religion of their baptism, and, if young enough, 
their very name would be changed, so that they should not know 
even their own family.^ 

We can only look upon this as perfectly natural, and liable 
to occur wherever a long-established order of things has favored 
it, an order which it is impossible to abolish all at once. 

The denial of justice and right, which that rooted custom 
entailed, became a crying evil when the question was no longer 
confined to a few isolated cases, though bad enough there, but 
scarcely perceptible in the general contentment of the happy and 
prosperous citizens of the young republic. 

^ The writer remembers the time when, only about a quarter of a century ago, a 
Catholic clergyman had never been allowed to enter a poor-house distant a few miles 
from New York City, and that the first who did enter by stealth, for the purpose 
of administering the last consolations of religion to a dying Irishman, was shame- 
fully abused by the head of the establishment. It is true that, on an appeal made 
to the supervisors of the county, the clergyman's remonstrance met with fair consid- 
eration, and the injustice was prohibited for the future. But would this reparation 
have taken place at a greater distance from New York ? And, did not the head of the 
establishment dare to act as he did, because assured by the former state of things 
that he would be sustained ? 



460 THE "EXODUS" AFD ITS EFFECTS. 

But wlien tliat vast wave of immigration suddenly rose and 
cast upon its shores limidreds of thousands of Catholics yearly, 
then did the injustice show itself in the most flagrant and bitter 
form, Wherever that wave spread and left the large floating 
population described in almost every town, city, village, and 
hamlet of the country. North and West, the Catholic immigrants 
were often denied the rites of their religion in the various charita- 
ble establishments whither they were driven to seek admission ; 
their children were often taken from them and sent to Protestant 
refuges and reformatories ; or, if the parents died, they were 
given in charge to people thinking it a duty they owed to God, 
to bring them up in hatred of the faith for which their ancestors 
had sutfered and died. 

It became an absolute necessity for Catholics to adopt meas- 
ures for the protection of themselves and their children. How 
long will this necessity continue ? It is impossible to say ; for 
those old customs have run so deeply in the grain of some of the 
American people that they are yet far from being eradicated, and 
it would be hard to foretell when the public establishments of the 
country will be entirely safe for the dearest interests of the chil- 
dren of the Church. In a few localities, they may already be so ; 
but, in general, they certainly are not. Justice is lame, and can- 
not yet run. swiftly. 

thus, "nothing was done but what was absolutely needed ; 
and the heavy burdens imposed on the shoulders of the Catholics, 
as soon as they arrived, had to be borne with patient ardor and 
blind confidence in God. 

Let us now turn our eyes to another tributary of that Irish 
stream. The Australian colony of this missionary people pos- 
sesses special features well worthy attentive study, as they will 
ultimately offer a very powerful aid to the resurrection of the 
mother-country. Throughout the previous narratives, this has 
been the great thought before our mind, and every thing tended 
to the elucidation of it, and the conclusion of this chapter will 
show that nothing inappropriate has been advanced, nor with- 
out due reference to the starting-point. 

It is our hope that the few words already said, on the position 
of Australia with respect to Asia, may have convinced our 
readers of the design, on the part of Providence, with respect to 
the future conversion of many nations to Catholicity over that 
vast Asiatic Continent ; and that this design was made clear by 
the very fact of the possession taken by Europeans of that great 
and almost deserted island to which our eyes now turn. Aus- 
tralia is evidently destined before long to be inhabited only by 
men of Japhetic blood, and so to aid in the spread of Japhetic 
manners and institutions among the dense and long-removed 
populations 'of the dim Orient. America, now completely Eu- 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 461 

ropeanized, in blood, language, and customs, has taken tlie lead ; 
Australia must follow. 

As was previously remarked, those densely-peopled districts 
of Eastern Asia have, as yet, scarcely been touched by Christian- 
ity, owing principally to their distance from Europe. Hence, it 
is the great boast of infidels that, after all, Christianity, as far as 
numbers go, enrolls only a minority of the human race among 
its adherents. The worshippers of Buddha are more numerous 
than the worshippers of Christ, not to speak of the followers of 
Mohammed. This, we belive, is a scandal and a stumbling-block 
in the eyes of many, who are not children of the Church, or 
M^ho, if born within her bosom, have, through education, or 
association, or both, almost lost their faith, and who are only too 
happy to catch at any paltry motives for disbelief of apparent 
difficult solution. 

Is Buddhism, especially, long to retain its superiority in 
point of numbers over Catholicity ? We believe not, we hope 
not ; and our hope rests principally on the near approach of the 
time when the " sons of Japhet will dwell in the tents of Sem." 
Catholicity, as has been shown, is a growth. Once fairly planted 
on the soil of Asia, by men of the blood of Japhet and of the 
faith in Jesus Christ, and the result is to us settled, for the 
growth of the tree is infallibly destined to choke up the weeds. 

And one of our chief motives for entertaining that firm hope 
is not the success which has so far attended the efibrts of the 
Catholic Church in those distant lands, remarkable as it has 
been, with so many difficulties in the way and so little help 
tendered by governments or wealthy men ; nor is it the success 
which, so far, has attended the Catholic Church, in contradistinc- 
tion to the miserable failure which has greeted the efforts of the 
numerous and wealthy Protestant sects, with all the favor lav- 
ished upon them by Protestant governments, and even our own 
of America, as was so convincingly proved in that most interest- 
ing work of Mr. Marshall — " Christian Missions." ISTo, our hope 
rests on entirely different grounds. 

One of the most powerful causes which led to the final 
triumph of Christianity in the Eoman Empire was, the constancy 
exhibited by the martyrs to the admiration and conviction of 
unbelievers, which could only come as a source of grace from 
Heaven. Tertullian's words have been admitted by all Christian 
writers as an axiom : " The blood of martyrs is the seed of the 
Church ! " 

All the coasts of Eastern Asia, and of the adjoining islands 
composing the empire of Japan, have for nearly three hundred 
years been sanctified by the blood, almost ceaselessly poured out, 
of as true martyrs as ever were the founders of Christianity, 
whether in the Roman or the Persian Empire. All the govern- 



462 THE "EXODUS" AKD ITS EFEEOTS. 

meiits of those countries — witli a single exception, that of Siam 
— ^have been guilty of the crime whose punishment was visited 
so heavily on the Roman emperors and Persian kings. The 
emperors of China, the rulers of Japan, the kings of Corea and 
of Anam, have shown their hatred of the Christian name to be 
as deadly, have shed Christian blood with as great and evident 
a zest as ever did Decius, Diocletian, Galerius, and their fel- 
lows in Eome, or the Sapors in Persia. The kings of Siam 
have been the only Eastern rulers who have not imbrued their 
hands in Christian blood, and yet, strange to say, Christianity is 
apparently less firmly rooted in the peninsula of India beyond 
the Ganges, in Siam particularly, than in any other region of 
Eastern Asia. This truly confirms Tertullian's axiom. 

Taking all things into account, we consider the Oriental 
persecutors of the Church in modern time to have surpassed in 
cruelty and systematic atrocity the persecutors of old. This 
j)ersecution has now lasted for three hundred years : a number 
consecrated in the first annals of our holy religion, and which, 
it may be hoped, will in the future ages be to the Catholics of 
Eastern Asia the consecrated number of their ecclesiastical 
history, after which another "peace of Constantino" will follow 
— a peace perhaps due to no great ruler received into the fold, 
but to the unconscious aid aftbrded by the spread of the race of 
Japhet on those shores, an aid as unconscious in its influence on 
Catholicity as the " liberalism " of ISTorth America, now repro- 
duced in Australia and Oceaniea, but none the less eftectual on 
that account. 

True, these are merely conjectures ; but conjectures, it may 
be observed, for which there are very fair grounds in the present 
shaping of events and the direction taken by public opinion. 
That the Irish will play a prominent part in those glorious 
events, at least by preparing the soil and planting Catholicity 
firmly in those nearly Europeanized countries, is our firm hoj)e ; 
and the reasons for entertaining this hope will be seen in the 
details of the new emigration. 

In 1848, the government and people of Australia refused to 
receive any more convicts from the mother-country, and even 
went so far as to send back to England a ship-load recently 
arrived. Just about that time, England, having come to look 
with favor on the policy of Irish emigration, held out induce- 
ments to those willing to go to the antipodes ; in many cases 
their passage was paid ; or, if money was asked of them, the full 
value was retm'ned in land-certificates, which they could realize 
on their arrival in the new country. The British government 
at last saw the wisdom of reserving for her own colonies those 
hardy adventurers who flocked in such numbers to the shores of 
the United States. 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 463 

This coming at a time when the " great famine " was still 
raging, large numbers accepted the offer of the government, and 
the Catholic population began to increase rapidly in Australia. 
There, at least, were the Irish at liberty to devote themselves to 
an occupation which had been peculiar to Ireland from time 
immemorial, that of grazing and cattle-raising. The new con- 
tinent turned out to be the best adapted for the breeding of 
sheep, perhaps in the whole world ; and wool immediately be- 
came one of the most profitable exports of the country. 

But, though many Irish settled there as farmers, that provi- 
dential rush to the cities which we saw in North America was 
also one of the features of this new Irish immigration. Hence, 
as in America, bishoprics were soon found necessary in all the 
large towns ; and Australia was in 1846 formed into an ecclesias- 
tical province, including the archbishopric of Sydney and the 
episcopal sees of Adelaide and Hobart Town. In 1862, the 
Metropolitan Church of Sydney counted five sufii'agan bishops, 
beside those of Auckland, in 'New Zealand, and Brisbane, in 
Queensland. And the few hundred oppressed Catholics who, 
forty years before, formed the entire Church in Australia, had 
already increased to more than two hundred thousand souls. 

The tree had been planted, and its growth was a matter of 
necessity. 

To speak of all the religious, educational, and charitable in- 
stitutions which grouped themselves around the newly-established 
episcopal centres, and to refer to the astonishing liberality dis- 
played by the poor immigrants, would be a source of new won- 
der, but only a repetition of what has gone before. The only 
remark that here suggests itself to our mind, struck as it is with 
admiration, is one which but tends to increase that admiration, 
the reflection, namely, that the generosity of the Irish people, 
not content with the wide field opened up to its workings in 
North America, chose also the Continent of Australia whereon 
to pour forth the inexhaustible treasures of its charity. 

There was, however, a feature exhibited on this new soil 
which was altogether unknown in the United States, and scarce- 
ly possible in Canada, but which will place in the hands of the 
Irish in Australia a far greater facility for helping their native 
country. In the United States every inducement is held out to 
them to forget their former life, and, by becoming citizens of a 
republic which has long been separated from England, to merge 
themselves into a people to whom Ireland is a foreign country ; 
not so in Australia. 

"Whatever the future of this new continent may be, within 
whatever period, of greater or less length, it may seek and secure 
its independence from the British Empire, at present it is not, 
and for some time to come will not be, independent. In those 



464 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

numerous and rising colonies, therefore, Englishmen remain 
English, Scotchmen Scotch, and Irishmen Irish. The three na- 
tionalities have never been fused into one at home ; they can- 
not consequently in the colonies ; and here a word of remark is 
called for. 

The British Empire, which in our second chapter we have 
shown from a sketch of Cesare Cantii to be spread all over the 
world, is very weak at its centre. There it is called the United 
Kingdom ; formed, that is, of three States, which so far have 
never so combined as to produce a perfect moral union. Their 
union is altogether political. One king, one Parliament, one 
general system of laws — such constitute the main elements of 
its unity. Even the Scotchmen, who inhabit the very soil of 
Great Britain, are almost as strongly Scotch as they were nnder 
their native kings. I^ot one of them will call or allow himself 
to be called an Englishman, and will scarcely consent even to 
the title British. Yet, ever since the accession of the Stuarts to 
the British throne, Scotland has never claimed for herself an in- 
dependent Parliament ; and she certainly does not dream of ask- 
ing for it now. 

The feelings of Irishmen on this point are pretty generally 
known ; the idea of union with England is to-day as distasteful 
as when it was first foisted on them. Moreover, their antipathy 
to union is far from being restricted to parliamentary unity ; it 
runs through all things — religion, political leanings, material 
interests, social manners, natural disposition. Even language 
has not yet become universally common ; and, though Divine 
Providence has bent the Irish to accept the English tongue, that 
it might serve them in their great mission, yet there are thou- 
sands of Irish people still Avho do not understand a word of it. 

It is clear, therefore, that the unity of the United Kingdom 
is altogether external and political in its significance, consisting 
merely in all three countries having the same Parliament and 
living under the same constitution. So palpable is this that 
John Bright, the great advocate of reform and liberalism, can- 
not be persuaded to side with the Irish in their petition for 
" home-rule," because he considers that it would be a disruption 
of the British Empire. 

But the great result of that want of moral unity is that, even 
with the one Parliament, the distinctions of nationality, on the 
part of the Irish and English at least, exist as strongly as they 
did three hundred years ago, when each country had its own 
Parliament. And so they remain wherever they may be, with- 
out any reproach as to their loyalty ; so that an Irisliman in 
Australia may be as loyal as any British subject, and yet remain 
strongly Irish in his sympathies, views, language, acts, and 
boasts. Thus, when the Australian colonies become, as they 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 465 

promise to do, strongly imbued witli Irish blood, they will 
form a powerful ally to the mother-country of all Irishmen — their 
native island. 

It is not thus in the United States. Having sworn allegiance 
to their new country, their very religion impresses on them the 
obligation to be faithful to her, to identify themselves with her, 
and their interests with hers ; to tender her, as a country, their 
j&rst affection, and the claim to their very blood, if necessity de- 
mands it. And, to put the case in its strongest light — though 
love and attachment to their former country is allowed' them, 
and it would be monstrous, were it possible, to forget her en- 
tirely — supposing the true interests of both were to come in con- 
flict, they would be compelled to side with the country of their 
adoption, however painful it might be to their feelings. They 
are Americans, and no longer Irishmen ; and all know that this 
fact is very clear before their eyes, and that the Union numbers 
among her citizens none truer or more zealous than those who 
once were Irishmen. 

In. Canada, as was said, the case is not altogether the same as 
in Australia. There Irishmen are not at liberty to show the 
same feeling for their native country, and prove equally useful 
to hew True, Canada is only a colony of the British Empire, 
whatever may be thought of the new " Dominion ; " and Irish- 
men may there remain as true Irishmen as at home, and yet be 
loyal to the empire ; but they seem almost paralyzed in their 
actions as Irish people. Strange as this may seem, it is a state 
of things felt by every one who looks at it in the right way. The 
only explanation that can be given is that, in Canada, the duel 
of interests is, so to speak, " triangular," and the intermingling 
of the Trench-Canadian element, which is strongly enlisted on 
the side of the Catholic Church, but which, for many reasons, 
cannot altogether fuse with the Irish element, deprives the Irish 
of much of that spontaneity with which they love, whenever 
free, to act. Whatever the cause may be, the fact is, we believe, 
as here stated. 

The position of Irish colonists in Australia is therefore excep- 
tional, and productive of most happy results for Ireland herself ; 
on which account the progress of the Irish people on Australian 
soil ought to be looked to by Catholics with an extraordinary de- 
gree of interest. It bears a twofold aspect, religious and politi- 
cal. Of the religious side we have already declined to speak, 
because of its perfect similarity with what we have witnessed in 
ISTorth America. However, a new consideration, full of interest, 
touches the hierarchy, on which we were not positively called 
upon to speak in the former case, so that a word on the subject 
may now be permitted. 

The fact has already been touched upon, that the Catholic 
30 



4:QQ THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

Cliurcli, particvilarly of late, has adopted as a universal policy, 
what was once much more restricted in its limits, to wit, the ap- 
pointment of regular bishops throughout the world almost, and 
the division of the soil, it may be said, of the whole earthly 
globe, into regular dioceses. A certain number of places still 
remain as apostolic vicariates, or even as prefectships ; but the 
tendency to bring all those districts under regularly-appointed 
bishops as soon as possible is now universal, even in Protestant 
countries. Thus, as we said, is possession taken of the soil. 

This is, we believe, the great final step to impart to the catho- 
licity of the Church a strict meaning, which it had not abso- 
lutely before. 

Whoever wishes to study the result of this difference has only 
to consult the respective lists of the bishops who assisted at the 
Council of Trent, and that of those who sat but yesterday in the 
Yatican, keeping under his eye a map of the world on Mercator's 
projection. 

Limiting ourselves to the consideration of Australia, it is now 
an established fact that this, the latest continent discovered and 
settled upon, is a Catholic field occupied by Catholic dioceses, 
whose number and efficiency will increase with the increasing 
population ; and this fact is owing mainly to Irish immigration. 
And it must not be forgotten that the future benefits which 
are to arise from this are not limited in extent to the confines 
of the continent itself, but will pass over to the vast regions of 
the neighboring Asia, where bishops also are waging but a help- 
less struggle in the midst of infidel nations and of the poorest 
flocks, who look to them for even material help, which must come 
chiefly from Australia and America. 

But, beyond material help, where are the future missionaries 
to be found for those vast fields now ripe for the harvest ? Is it " 
too much to imagine ere long the establishment of a seminary 
for China, Japan, and even India, in Sydney or Adelaide ? It 
would be a great surprise to us to know that the thought has not 
already struck some of the bishops now living, of the day when 
so great an. enterprise may be possible, or even set on foot. It is 
true that their first solicitude is to plant the tree on the soil 
marked out for them by Providence ; but, as good husbandmen, 
they must be aware that there is no tree from which numbers of 
seeds are not detached every autumn and borne away on the 
four winds of heaven, to multii3ly ten or twenty fold wherever 
they fall ; and those winds fill the sails of vessels, or play about 
the steamships already starting in regular lines northward and to 
the northeast, fit bearers of the audax Japeti genus. 

Passing from religious to political considerations, a new 
source of future blessings to Ireland will be found in the Irish 
emigration to Australia. Of the local politics of those new colo- 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 467 

nies tlie writer knows noticing, and, even if he did; they would 
not find a place here. But the question now is not one of petty 
municipal or colonial affairs, so much as of the position, in gen- 
eral that the Irish are occupying in this new field ; a position 
which renders them capable of taking an active part in the poli- 
tics of their native country, the connection with which has never 
been broken oft\ They are and remain, as they ought to remain. 
Irishmen still in their new destination. In the mean time they 
grow ill wealth, intelligence, and social standing, on that vast 
field, as to-day we see them in America. The past misfortunes 
of Ireland, which at home still press heavily on the population, 
and hinder it from rising to its just level as speedily as it would 
if enjoying perfect liberty, have no withering effect upon their 
future in Australia. Hence, the British (Grovernment is com- 
pelled to respect them, and a great portion of that respect is re- 
flected upon the island of their origin. The Irish at home now 
possess influential allies in their own countrymen scattered the 
wide world over, but chiefly in those of Australia. The time is 
long ago past when they had to look for allies among the self- 
interested nations of Europe. They no longer need feed their 
imagination on dreams of Spanish aid or French intervention ; 
they have more ardent, disinterested, and powerful friends in 
their own countrymen now scattered by millions over foreign 
lands ; and the help they look to from them, consists not in fleets, 
munitions of war, or armed troops. The dramas of Kinsale, of 
Smerdick, of Aughrim, and Limerick, will, let us hope, never be 
acted again. The hopes of to-day are of another character, and 
infinitely more certain and sure of accomplishment. Their coun- 
trymen now enjoy high positions in British colonies, and in 
countries which once were British, but are now detached from 
the parent stem and standing high among the nations of the 
world. These moral alliances carry with them far greater 
weight and are much more efficacious in our days than armies 
and fleets ; for the influence of opinion is outweighing more and 
more every day any other influence. 

Is it not wonderful, for instance, to see Mr. Gavan Duffy, 
once of the Nation^ and an ex-rebel, now, or recently, premier 
in the Australian cabinet ? — the right direction of a young and 
growing people resting in the hands and. under the guidance of 
a mere Irishman. 

Something will be shortly said of the true impulsion to be 
given to that influence in order to complete and render thorough 
the resurrection of Ireland. For to this end have we been 
marching step by step all along, and are on the point at last of 
arriving with our whole array of considerations marshalled be- 
fore us, that the last step may be rendered telling and all-effi- 
cient. 



468 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

It is only since the discovery , of the gold-fields in 1850, that 
the population took a rapid increase and the importance of the 
Australian colonies became at once evident. Hence every thing 
there is still of yesterday, and documents of interest are yet 
wanting on many subjects. Details as convincing in character 
as those of the immigrant labors in l^orth America cannot conse- 
quently be furnished. ^Nevertheless, we are fain to believe that 
many things happened in the new continent with respect to 
Irishmen which w^ould also display the designs of God regarding 
that people. One circumstance at least, drawn* from the history 
of those colonies, seems to us to be so unmistakably of this char- 
acter that its mention may be a pleasure. 

The land system first established by the mother-country dif- 
fered totally from that adopted in the United States and Canada, 
and would, if persisted in, have hindered the Irish immigrants 
from acquiring the competency requisite to enable them to con- 
tribute adequately toward the religious and charitable establish- 
ments in the country. Our readers will remember our pointing 
out the striking fact that it was in the United States alone the 
people was able to efiect what it did efiect in this matter. The 
United States would have continued to this day in the undis- 
puted enjoyment of this great blessing, had the original policy 
sketched out by England for Australian settlers held good : and 
the marvel of its not still holding good consists in the fact that 
the vast majority of Australian colonists themselves willed it to 
continue. 

At first the government lands, which in fact included the 
whole country, were disposed of by grants from the crown. 
Then an Australian land company was incorporated by England, 
and received for starting its operations a million acres. Several 
circumstances, apparently of small importance, which cannot 
here be detailed, showed a tendency in fact to establish a landed 
aristocracy in Australia from the outset. The system advocated 
by Edward Gibbon Wakefield being adopted by the governor 
of the colony, the new statesmen strove hard to dam up the 
stream of immigration by fictitious land prices, and by the concen- 
tration of labor for the special interest of capitalists. At first 
they were completely successful, and the new country was fashion- 
ing its social state after that of aristocratic England. This was 
only natural, as Australia ofiered a magnificent vent for those 
troublesome younger sons of aristocratic families who have been 
brought up to pretensions which the feudal laws, by the right of 
primogeniture, forbid to be realized. It is needless to add that 
the colonial policy of Lord Grey smoothed every thing for the 
accomplishment of their purpose. 

Worse still, the capitalists and great wool-growing squatters 
of Australia thought that the creation of a class of independent 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 469 

settlers would be prejudicial to their interests. It heightened 
the price of labor which they were so anxious to keep down. 
The country seemed destined more and more to become a second 
England ; and land, land, the blessed land, which, according to 
the London- Times, the Saxon loves so ardently, was to become 
the possession of the few, while the labor of the many would be as 
niggardly rewarded as at home. There was indeed great danger 
that the liberal policy of the United States would remain with- 
out imitators, and Korth America still continue the only home 
of the poor and of the artisan. 

The pet policy then in vogue was to encourage only the 
immigration of mere laborers, who could not well rise higher 
than the grade of "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The 
sheep-farming capitalists would possess immense estates, which 
they could improve after their own fashion, receiving from Eu- 
rope a full supply of laborers, fitted by their former life for 
menial, agricultural, and pastoral occupations. No one was al- 
lowed to buy land at a lower price than one pound per acre, nor 
in smaller quantity than three hundred acres. This enactment 
in itself would at once exclude from possession of land nearly 
all the Irish immigrants. Such was the enlightened colonial policy 
encouraged by British statesmen and supported by the majority 
of the early Australian settlers. 

"We are not acquainted with all the details of the events 
which brought about the change of policy in 1853, and, even 
were we, we should certainly recognize .and admire in them the 
work of God rather than of man. It must be acknowledged, 
however, that the Duke of JSTewcastle, who succeeded Lord Grey, 
manifested from the first a desire of introducing a complete 
reversal of policy toward the new continent. The control of the 
land revenues was handed over to the colonists themselves, and 
consequently withdrawn from the " Australian Land Company," 
a free constitution with legislative houses granted, and a new era 
opened upon the country. 

By this happy revolution, Australia placed her colonists on 
almost an equal footing with those of the United States, and it is 
highly probable that the Duke of ISTewcastle's object was solely to 
prevent the emigration of the Irish to America only, and 
induce many of them to settle in the English colony. If this 
view be true, then does the United States possess the honor of 
being, under God, the true cause of the change of policy referred 
to, which enabled Irishmen to do in Australia what they had 
already been a long time doing in America. 

The two great streams of emigration which we have so far 
traced, gave rise to a last and most important one, namely, the 
Irish emigration to England. 

Had they followed their natural inclinations, few indeed of 



470 " THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

them would ever have thought of makmg England theu' home. 
We confess to om' surprise on first learning that London con- 
tained nearly three hundred thousand of them, and that all the 
large manufacturing cities of Great Britain were crowded with 
them, and our inability to scarcely understand how they could 
have consented to rush in such numbers to a country for which 
the poor among them particularly entertain such an instinctive 
repugnance. That a few might be driven to it by absolute 
starvation and the lack of means to go farther, was easy to 
imagine ; but that such vast numbers of them could take that 
direction, remained a mystery to us until we began to study the 
details of this process furnished by Mr. Henry Mayhew, in his 
" London Labor and London Poor." 

" It was," he tells us, " into Liverpool that the tide of immi- 
gration flowed the strongest, in the calamitous year of the famine 
— 184T-'48. ' Between the 13th of January and the 13th of 
December, both inclusive,' writes Mr. Rushton, the Liverpool 
magistrate, to Sir George Grey, ' two hundred and ninety-six 
thousand two hundred and thirty-one persons landed in this 
port ' (Liverpool) ' from L'eland. Of this vast number, about one 
hundred and thirty thousand emigrated to the United States ; 
some fifty thousand were passengers on business ; and the re- 
mainder — over one hundred and sixty-one thousand— were pau- 
pers, half naked and starving, landed, for the most part, during 
the winter, and became, immediately on landing, applicants for 
parochial relief. You already know the immediate result of this 
accumulation of misery in the crowded town of Liverpool ; of 
the cost of relief at once rendered necessary to prevent the 
thousands of hungry and naked L*ish from perishing in our 
streets; and also of the cost of the pestilence which ordinarily 
follows in the train of famine and misery, such as we then had to 
encounter. . . . Hundreds of patients perished, notwithstanding 
all efforts made to save them, and ten Roman Catholic and one 
Protestant clergymen, many parochial officers, and many medical 
men, who devoted themselves to the task of alleviating the suifer- 
ings of the wretched, died in the discharge of this high duty.' 

" Great numbers of these people were, at the same time, also 
conveyed from Ireland to Wales, especially to jSTewport. They 
were brought over by coal-vessels, as a return-cargo — a living- 
ballast — two shillings and sixpence being the highest fare, and 
were huddled together like pigs. The manager of the ITewport 
' tramp-house ' has stated concerning these people : ' They don't 
live long, diseased as they are. They are very remarkable : they 
will eat salt by basins full, and drink a great quantity of water 
after.' 

" Many, there is no doubt, tramped their way to London, 
sleeping at the casual wards of the unions on their way. 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 4Y1 

" Of the immigration direct, by the vessels trading from Ire- 
land to London, there are no returns, such as have been collected 
by Mr. Eushton for Liverpool ; but the influx is comparatively 
small, on account of the greater length and cost of the voyage. 
During the year 1863, I am informed that fifteen or sixteen 
thousand passengers were brought from Ireland to London 
direct, and in addition to these, five hundred more were brought 
over from Cork, in connection with the arrangements for emi- 
gration to the United States, and consigned to the emigration 
agent here." 

Another proof that all human calculations are likely to be 
falsified with respect to such enormous calamities as that which 
then overwhelmed the Irish people. Their only thought was to 
fly — no matter where, no matter how they would be received 
and treated, or how their condition might be bettered. As 
Wales and Lancashire were the nearest places to them out of 
their own country, thither they were carried by liundi-eds of 
thousands and cast upon the shore. 

"What became of the survivors, and what part are they now 
playing on that great theatre — England ? The same answer 
c&mes back to us : there also they are a missionary people ; they 
are, in fact, converting England, and likewise aiding in and pre- 
paring for the resurrection of their own country. 

Many, we knoAV, have taken a different view of their work 
in that busy hive of English industry amid the scramble for the 
goods of this life ; but, fortunately, there are other competent 
and disinterested witnesses, whose testimony is as valuable as it 
is unexceptional, from whom we select Mr. Henry Mayhew, an 
Englishman, a non-Catholic, a cool-headed statistician, as his 
book shows, but gifted with a heart that moved him from the 
beginning to tell the plain truth, and the truth contained in bis 
book is almost one long-continued praise of the character of the 
lowest among the Irish. And it may be remembered, as evi- 
dence of his trustworthiness, that truth of this character was 
particularly unpalatable to the English stomach, and calculated, 
from a mercantile point ot view, to injure rather than favor the 
sale of his book. 

The praise results chiefly from the contrast between the 
English and Irish poor. For, when the author speaks of the 
London poor, they are mainly English, They are the chief 
subject of his theme, and whenever in his rambles among them 
he comes across the Irish, who are lost in the midst of that fright- 
ful moral wretchedness, his testimony is always loud, sincere, 
and unmistakably expressed. 

His first investigations were among the costermongers, of 
whom there are thirty thousand in London, one-third of them 
being Irish. The two classes often live together ; but there 



472 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

is a wide moral bridge dividing tliem. The following will show 
the main results of his observations : 

I. As regards religion. 

" An intelligent and trustworthy man, until very recently 
actively engaged in costermongering, computed that not three in 
one hundred English costermongers had, ever heen in the interior 
of a churchy or of any place of worship, or knew what was 
meant by Christianity. The same person gave me the following 
account, which was confirmed by others : 

" ' The costers have no religion at all^ and very little notion, 
or none at all, of what religion or a future state is. But I am 
satisfied that, if the costers had to profess themselves of some 
religion to-morrow, they would all become Roman Catholics, 
ev^ry one of them. This is the reason : London costers live very 
often in the same courts and streets as the poor Irish, and if the 
Irish are sick, be sure there come to them the priest, the Sisters 
of Charity — they are good women — and some other ladies. 
Many a man that is not a Catholic has rotted and died without 
any good person near him. ... It is still the stranger that the 
regular costermongers, who are nearly all Londoners, should 
have such respect for the Roman Catholics, when they have such 
a hatred of the Irish, whom they look upon as intruders and 
underminers.' " 

Is not this statement enough in itself to show that the 
very presence of the Irish in their midst is already woi'king 
the slow conversion of the Londoners ? ]^ow, for a word of 
Mr. Mayhew's on the religion of the Irish costermongers. 
It may be superfluous, but the contrast cannot foil to make it 
interesting : 

" Almost all the street Irish are Roman Catholics. During 
my inquiries I met with only two who said they were Prot- 
estants, and, when I came to converse with them, I found out 
that they were partly ignorant of, and partly indiiferent to, any 
religion whatever. 

" I found that some of the Irish Roman Catholics — ^but they 
had been for many years resident in England, and that among 
the poorest classes of the English — had become indifferent to 
their creed, and did not attend their chapels, unless at the great 
feasts and festivals. One old stall-keeper, who had been in 
London nearly thirty years, said to me : ' Ah, God knows, sir, 
I ought to attend mass every Sunday, but I have not for many a 
year, barrin' Christmas-day and such times. But I will thry and 
go more regular, plase God.' This man seemed to resent as a 
sort of indignity my question if he had ever attended any other 
place of worship : 'Af coorse not ! ' was the reply." Mr. May- 
hew fell into a verbal mistake when he said that this man was 
indifferent to his religion. 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 473 

We cannot afford to transfer any more of his experiences 
among the Irisli. From all his accounts, they are the same in 
London as everywhere else, most "firmly attached to Catholicity, 
and, as a general rule, most exemplary in the performance of 
their religions obligations. 

It is fitting, however, to give the conclusion of a long de- 
scription of what he saw among them while visiting them in 
the company of a clergyman : " The religious fervor of the 
people whom I saw was intense. At one house that I entered, 
the woman set me marvelling at the strength of her zeal, by 
showing me how she continued to have in her sitting-room a 
sanctuary to pray every night and morning, and even during 
the day when she felt weary and lonesome." 

II. Passing from religion to morality, let us look at this 
writer again : " Only one-tenth, at the outside, of the couples 
living together and carrying on the costermongering trade 
(among the English) are married. ... Of the rights of legiti- 
mate or illegitimate children, the English costermongers under- 
stand nothing, and account it a mere w^aste of money to go 
through the ceremony of wedlock, when a pair can live together, 
and be quite as well regarded by their fellows without it. The 
married women associate with the unmarried mothers of fami- 
lies without scruple. There is no honor attached to the married 
state and no shame to concubinage. 

" As regards the fidelity of these women, I was assured that 
in any thing like good times they were rigidly faithful to their 
paramours ; but that, in the worst pinch of poverty, a departure 
from this fidelity — ^if it provided a few meals or a fire — was not 
considered at all heinous." 

Further details may be read in the book quoted from, which 
would scarcely come well in these pages, though quite appro- 
priate to the most interesting work in which they appear. From 
the whole, it is only too clear that the class of people referred to 
is profoundly immoral and corrupt, their very poverty only 
hindering them from" indulging in an excess of libertinism. 

On the other hand, when Mr. Mayhew speaks of the street 
Irish in London, he is most emphatic in his praise of the purity 
of the women in particular, and the care of the parents in 
general to preserve the virtue of their daughters, in the midst 
of the frightful corruption ever under their eyes. The only 
remark he passes of a disj^araging character is the following : 

" I may here observe " — referring to the statement that Irish 
parents will not expose their daughters to the risk of what they 
consider corrupt influences — " that, when a young Irish woman 
does break through the pale of chastity, she often becomes, as I 
was assured, one of the most violent and depraved of, perhaps, 
the most depraved class." 



4Y4 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

It is evident, from tlie mere form in wbicli tliis phrase is put, 
that such a thing is of very rare occurrence, and that the vio- 
lence and depravity spoken of offer all the stronger contrast 
to the general purity of the whole class, and are merely the result 
of the open and unreserved character of the race. 

But the whole world knows that chastity is the rule, and 
perhaps the most special virtue of the Irish, a fact which their 
worst enemies have heen compelled to confess. In this same 
work of Mr. Mayhew's a still more surprising fact than the 
last — for that is acknowledged by all — is brought into astonish- 
ing prominence ; a fact opposed to the general opinion of their 
friends even, and yet supported by incontrovertible evidence. 
It relates to another contrast between the English and Irish 
costermongers on the score of temfperance. 

III. The result arrived at by his inquiries among liquor- 
dealers in that part of London inhabited by about equal num- 
bers of both nationalities, Mr. Mayhew gives us as twenty to one 
in favor of the Irish with respect to the consumption of liquor. 
In most " independent," that is to say, " not impoverished " 
Irish families, water is the only beverage at dinner, with punch 
afterward ; and estimating the number of teetotallers, among 
the English at three hundred, there are six hundred among the 
Irish, who constitute, it may be remembered, only one-third of 
the whole costermonger class, and those Irish teetotallers, having 
taken the pledge under the sanction of their priests, look upon 
it as a religious observance and keep it rigidly. The number of 
Irish teetotallers has been considerably increased since Mr. May- 
hew made his returns, in consequence of the energetic crusade en- 
tered upon against drink by the zealous London clergy, under 
the powerful lead of Archbishop Manning. 

It is true that an innkeeper told Mr. Mayhew that " he would 
rather have twenty poor Englishmen drunk in his tap-room than 
a couple of poor Irishmen, who will quarrel with anybody, and 
sometimes clear the I'oom." But this remark, if it shows any 
thing, shows only how and why the Irish have obtained that 
reputation of being a nation of drunkards, which is slanderous 
and false. 

IV. Yet another, and perhaps as surprising a result as any, 
is the contrast between both classes of people with respect to 
economy and foresight. The English street-sellers are found 
everywhere spending all their income in the satisfaction often of 
brutish appetites ; the Irish, on the contrary, save their money, 
either for the purpose of transmitting it to their poor relatives in 
Ireland, or bringing up their children properly, or — if they are 
young — to provide for their marriage-expenses and home. Such 
cares as these never seem to afflict the English costermonger. 
So strongly did Mr. Mayhew find these characteristics marked 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 475 

among tlie Irish, that he is at times inclined to accuse them of 
carrying them too far, even to the display of a sordid and parsi- 
monious spirit. According to him, they apply to the various 
"unions," or to the parish, even when they have money, or 
sometimes go with wretched food, dwelling, or clothing, in order 
to have a small fund laid by, in case of any emergency arising. 

But the general result of his observations is clear : that the 
Irish are most provident and far-seeing ; a surprising statement, 
doubtless, to the generality of Mr. Mayhew's readers, but one 
which, after all, only accords with the testimony of many unex- 
ceptionable witnesses of their life in other countries. And, if in 
England, in London especially, they at times appear sordid in 
their economy, is not this the very natural result of the misery 
they had previously endured in their own impoverished land, 
and therefore a proof that, at least, they have profited by the 
terrible ordeals through which they were compelled to pass ? 

We have spoken only of the Irish in London ; the same facts 
are most probably true of them in all the large cities of Great 
Britain. Unfortunately, Mr. Mayhew's most interesting work 
has found no imitators in other parts of the kingdom. F. Per- 
raud's remarks, however, in his " Ireland under English Rule," 
extend almost over the whole country. 

After giving his own experience, and that of many others 
whom he had consulted, or whose Avorks he had read ; alter hav- 
ing set forth the dangers which beset the Irish in that (to them) 
"most foreign country" — England — and also the success which 
had attended the labors of many proselytizing agents among 
them, and even in some cases the progress of immorality in their 
midst resulting from the innumerable seductions to which they 
were exposed, a success and a progress which Mr. Mayhew's per- 
sonal observation would lead us to think the good father has ex- 
aggerated, he concludes as follows : 

" We must not overlook the fact that the Irish emigration to 
England and Scotland produces in many individual cases results 
which cannot be too deeply deplored. 

" But there, also, as well as in America and Australia, through 
the economy of an admirable providence, God makes use of those 
Irish immigrants for the propagation and extension of the Cath- 
olic faith in the midst of English and Scotch Protestantism. What 
progress has not the Catholic religion made within the last thirty 
years in England ? And might not the Catholics say to their sepa- 
rated brethren what Tertullian said to the Csesars of the third 
century : ' Our religion is but of yesterday ; and behold, we fill 
your towns, your councils, your camps, your tribes, your cleGurim, 
the palace, the senate, the forum. . . . You have persecuted us 
during centuries, and behold, we spring up afresh from the blood 
of martyrs ! ' 



476 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFEOTS. 

" At the beginning of the reign of George III., England and 
Scotland scarcely contained sixty thousand (Jatholics who had re- 
mained true to the faith of their fathers. Their number in 1821 
was, according to the official census, five hundred thousand. In 
1842, they were estimated at from two million to two million 
five hundred thousand. At present (1864) they number nearly 
four million, and of this total amount the single city of London 
figures for more than two hundred and fifty thousand." 

In a note he adds the following figures, furnished him by 
Dr. Grant, the late Bishop of Southwark : 

Total No. of Catholics. No. of Irish. 



Manchester 


. 80,000 . 


. 60,000 


Liverpool 


130,000 . 


85,000 


Birmingham 


. 30,000 . 


. 20,000 


Preston ... 


. ■ 24,000 . 


4,300 


"Wigan .... 


. 18,000 . 


. 16,000 


Bolton ... 


12,000 . 


4,000 


St. Helen's (Lancashire) . 


. 10,000 . 


. 6,000 


Edinburgh ... 


50,000 . 


35,000 


Glasgow 


. 127,000 . 


. 90,000 



" Finally, we must not foi'get that about one-half the army 
and navy is composed of Irish Catholics. 

" In 1792 England and "Wales counted no more than thirty- 
five chapels ; in 1840 the number amounted to five hundred, 
among which were vast and splendid churches, such as St. 
George's, Southwark, and the Birmingham Cathedral. At pres- 
ent (1864) the number is nearly one thousand. 

" In connection with the movement of individual conversions, 
which yearly brings within our ranks from those of Protestant- 
ism the most upright, the sincerest, the best-disposed souls, the 
Irish immigration in England is then destined to play an impor- 
tant part in the so desirable return of that great island to the 
faith which she received in the sixth century from St. Gregory 
the Great and St. Austin of Canterbury," and, let us add, from 
Aidan and his Irish monks of Lindisfarne and lona, as Monta- 
lembert has shown. 

If we examine closely the figures just furnished by P. Per- 
raud, and consider that the number of Catholics in Great Brit- 
ain was only five hundred thousand in 1821, which, following his 
calculation, mounted to four million in 1864, if we look closely 
into the gradations of the increase marked in the various censuses 
taken between those dates, we shall find that the Irish immigra- 
tion has indeed played a most important part in the return of 
England toward Catholicity. We are surprised to find that he 
seems to estimate the number of Irish in England at only one 
million ; there can be no doubt that they and their offspring 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 477 

compose the majority of Catholics there, and that many of the 
Englishmen who come back to the true faith are induced by 
their example and infiuence, particularly among the lower or- 
ders, and that the real work of the conversion of the English na- 
tion rests in the hands of the Irish immigrants. Mr. Mayhew 
has informed us of the disposition of the English costermongers 
on religious matters. 

We have now examined the three great waves which bore 
the Irish to foreign countries ; the lesser streamlets, which wan- 
dered away into other English colonies, may be dismissed, as to 
trace and follow up their course would involve more time and 
trouble than they really call for. We now see the Irish race dis- 
seminated in large groups over many and vast territories ; and, 
although the home population has been considerably diminished 
by that great exodus, and is now reduced to abont five millions, 
nevertheless, to count them as they are dispersed throughout the 
world, their number is far higher than it has ever been before ; 
and we now proceed to oifer some considerations tending to 
show the effects of that vast emigration on the resurrection of the 
race, and on the future progress of the country from which the 
race comes. 

First, then, emigration has given Ireland and Irishmen an 
importance in the eyes of the world which they and it would 
never have acquired unless that emigration had taken place ; so 
that England, on whom in a great measure their future fate de- 
pends, is now compelled to respect and render them justice ; and 
justice is all that is wanting to bring about their complete resur- 
rection. 

In order to form a true idea on this point, it is necessary to 
consider them in their twofold aspect, as emigrants to the 
United States, residing under and citizens of a government dis- 
tinct from that of England; and, secondly, in countries which 
are under the control of Great Britain, one of these being Eng- 
land itself. 

In the Union they become for the greater part citizens of the 
country which they have made their home, and the first condi- 
tion necessary for the obtaining of this right of citizenship is the 
renunciation of all allegiance to their former English rulers. The 
readiness and joy even with which they perform this task need 
no mention. But, as Christians, the new obligations under 
which they bind themselves involve something more than the 
mere oath of allegiance ; the spirit no less than the letter of the 
oath prescribes that they acknowledge no other country as theirs 
than that which oifered them a refuge, and consequently, by the 
very fact of becoming American citizens, they cease to be Irish- 
men. 

But their oath does not bind them to forget their former 



478 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

country, as little as it forbids tliem to benefit it as far as lawfully 
lies in their power. Far otherwise. Their new allegiance would 
indeed be a poor thing if, in its very conception, it could only bind 
hearts so cold as to renounce at once all affection for the land of 
their birth, and banish in a day memories that the day before 
were sacred. This is not required of them ; and, were it, they 
could never so understand their allegiance. They remain, and 
justly, firmly attached to Ireland, and look anxiously for any 
lawful occasion on which they may manifest their aifection by 
their acts. 

Meanwhile, in their new country, position, influence, wealth, 
consideration, often fall to their lot ; their numbers swell, and 
they become an important factor in the republic. Something 
of the power wielded by the great nation of which they are now 
citizens attaches to them, and shows them to the astonished gaze 
of England under a totally new and unexpected aspect. In war, 
the effect is most telling, and, even so far back as 1812, the part 
played by " saucy Jack " Barry, for instance, already gave rise to 
very grave considerations and forebodings on the part of British 
statesmen. But, even in time of peace, the high position held 
by many Irishmen in the United States, and the aggregate voice 
of a powerful party, where every tongue has a vote, cannot fail 
to tell advantageously on questions referring to their former 
'country. 

Can it be imagined that this exercises no influence on the 
treatment of Ireland by the ruling power? To afford a true 
conception of the alteration brought about by Irish emigration, 
suppose for an instant the ruling power using again its old reck- 
lessness in abusing Ireland — not that we imagine the English 
statesmen of to-day capable of such a thing and anxious to restore 
what, happily, has passed away forever — but merely to show the 
utter impossibility of such a contingency again arising, suppose 
one of the old penal laws to be again enacted and sanctioned by 
a British sovereign, what would the effect be on the multitude 
of Irishmen now living in America ? What, independently of 
the Irish, would be the effect on all the organs, worthy of the 
name, of public opinion in America ? How would the great 
majorityof the members, not of Congress only, But of the Legis- 
lature of each State, speak ? Public opinion is now the ruler of 
the world, and when public opinion declares against a flagrant 
and crying injustice, its voice must be heard, its mandate obeyed, 
and lawlessness cease. This extreme and, as we believe, impos- 
sible example, is merely adduced as a proof of the advantage 
which Ireland has reaped from the dispersion of her scattered 
children — an advantage falling back on her own head, in return, 
perhaps, for the mission they are working. 

But, over and above the supposition of such an extreme case, 



THE "EXODFS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 479 

there is surely a silent power in tlie mere standing of millions of 
free men wlio would resent, as done to themselves, a recurrence 
of an attack on their old country. And there are, beyond ques- 
tion, three millions of former Irishmen, citizens to-day of the 
United States, on whom the glance of many an English states- 
man, with any just pretension to the name, must fall. Therefore 
do we say that now England must respect Ireland. 

That respect is daily heightened by the greater comfort and 
easier circumstances, though still far too wretched on the whole, 
of the Irish at home, which have been mainly brought about by 
the help received from their exiled countrymen. As was seen, 
the old policy of their oppressors had for chief object the pauper- 
ization of the country, and, as was also seen, that policy was 
eminently successful. We know how deeply the effects of that 
former policy are still felt, and how far from completion still is 
I'ustice in that regard ; how they still complain, and with only 
too much reason, of many laws which are as so many gyves still 
binding them down in their old degradation ; but, of this, the 
following chapter will speak. 

Yet, it is undeniable that their situation is considerably im- 
proved, and that the excessive sufferings which formerly seemed 
their privilege, are scarcely possible in our days. This change 
in their circumstances for the better may be ascribed to a variety 
of causes, one of which, we acknowledge, has been the repairing 
of many prev^ious injustices. But we must acknowledge also 
that the main lever in a nation's resurrection, once the ground 
is cleared round about — her treasury — has, as far as Ireland is 
concerned, been chiefly replenished from abroad. Absentee land- 
lords still drain the country ; but the money which has gone 
into it has been certainly owing greatly to the immense sums 
transmitted yearly from America by the exiles, all of which has 
certainly not returned to the place from which it went out. It 
is impossible to estimate the amount which was kept in Ireland 
and that which floated back, but the balance must be consider- 
ably on the side of what remained, as the distress at home Avas 
so great, and in millions of instances immediate relief came from 
the distant friends who had acquired a competency in their new 
country, and, knowing the dire distress of their relatives at home, 
sent generally what they could spare, by the speediest means at 
their command. 

There is no doubt that thousands of families have thus been 
benefited by that first sad emigration of their friends, and that 
the visible improvement in the condition of the Irish at home 
is in a great measure due to it. We hear, moreover, that the 
working of the new " Encumbered Estates Court " has already 
placed in the hands of native Irishmen many parcels of the 
lands of their fathers, and probably many of the ample estates 



4:80 THE "EXODUS" AOT) ITS EFFECTS. 

belonging to what was tlie Irisli CImrcli Establishment, whicli 
are to be sold, will find their way back in the same manner. 

The Irish are thus being slowly reinstated in possession of 
their own soil, and, that once accomplished, the respect of Eng- 
land is secured — respectability in England being in its essence 
equivalent to real estate. 

Thus is the uprising of the nation being gradually, silently, 
but surely brought about by the emigration to the United States ; 
and this effect is considerably heightened when the emigration 
to countries under English control is taken into consideration — 
Canada, Australia, England itself. 

In those places the same results followed which we have 
just witnessed in the United States, but another and far greater 
result remains for them. IS[ot only did they slowly aid in 
awakening the respect for their countrymen at home in the 
English breast by their own rising importance and improved 
condition, but in Canada and Australia they possess a privilege 
which, in the British Isles, is theirs only in theory, but abroad 
becomes a very powerful fact. 

Ever since the Union of 1800, the Irish are supposed to form 
a part and parcel of the empire at home, and to have fair repre- 
sentation of their native country in the members they return to 
the Imperial Parliament. But it is well known that the Irish 
influence in that Parliament is almost null, and that their 
presence there frequently is productive of no other result than 
to countenance laws injurious to their own country. Does, can 
Ireland hope to derive any political or social benefit from her 
representatives in London beyond whatever may accrue to her 
from their vain remonstrances and ineffective speeches ? But in 
the colonial Parliaments the case is very diflerent. 

It is not our desire to be understood as saying that Irishmen, 
by meddling with politics, can effect a certain improvement in 
their condition and that of their country, beyond giving tokens 
of the life which is in them. "We believe, on the contrary, that too 
great an eagerness in such pursuits has injured them on many 
occasions ; and they ought to beware of flattering themselves 
that they are rising, because their votes are clamored for, and 
they themselves exhorted to enter into the contest as fierce par- 
tisans. This, too often, leads them into making themselves the 
mere tools of shrewd men. 

But, in the colonies, they muster in considerable force, and, 
with prudence and sagacity, may have their desires and measures 
fairly considered and conceded ; for, unfortunately, the style of 
measures fair and favorable to them as Irishmen and Catholics, 
is completely at variance with that of those opposed to them, 
whom, go where they will, they encounter, ancl always in the 
same form. In Ireland, they are at liberty, apparently, to do the 



THE "EXODUS" A'NB ITS EFFECTS. 481 

same by reason of their sviperioritj in point of numbers ; tbe 
result of tbe late Galway elections proves wbat a farce is this 
show of liberty, and even the members whom they would and do 
sometimes elect possess a very feeble influence, or none, in what 
is called the Imperial Parliament. But, in the colonies, if they, 
as electors, outnumber their political opponents, they can and 
must return the majority to the House of Representatives and of 
officers to the various departments of the colonial administration. 
Such is the law of election in really representative governments 
which are truly free ; the majority of electors returns the. major- 
ity to the government ; and rightly so. Of course, there is 
room here, particularly where the majority happens to be Irish, 
for a vast quantity of frothy bluster about drilled and intimidated 
voters, and all that sort of thing. With that we have no con- 
cern at present, and merely remark etijtassant that it is a pity a 
little more of it was not wasted on the recent Galway elections, 
already alluded to, on both sides ; and for the rest, that the world 
has not yet been apprised of Irish majorities in the Australian 
Parliament abusing their power by either accidental or system- 
atic misrule ; and it may, therefore, be safely conceded that, on 
the whole, the government has rested in safe hands. However, 
what concerns us at present is the state of Canada and Australia, 
where, among the highest public dignitaries, are found men who 
are Irish, not simply by birth, but in feeling and in truth. And 
the conclusion which we wish to draw from that fact is, that Ire- 
land is greatly benefited by the high positions which her sons 
assume in those distant colonies ; and probably no one will be 
rash enough to deny or controvert in any way this point. 

The truth is, that by emigration Ireland has suddenly ex- 
panded into vast regions formerly ignorant of her name ; regions 
which swell the power and wealth of England, and which are 
destined to play a very important part in her future history. In 
these districts Irishmen have found a new country ; something 
of the ubiquity of the English belongs to them, and the influ- 
ence, power, and weight, thus thrown into their hands, need no 
farther comment. To show this in extenso would be only to 
travel over ground already trodden in previous pages, enumer- 
ating the various countries they have touched upon ip their 
Exodus. Thus have our seemingly long digressions had a very 
direct object in view, and served powerfully to solve our original 
question. "We may now see that the resurrection of Ireland was 
intimately involved in the emigration of her children ; that much 
of what has already taken place to aid in that resurrection may 
be ascribed to this emigration, and that much brighter days are 
yet in store for the nation, resulting mainly from this constant 
and powerful cause. Let no one, then, lament the perseverance 
of those hardy wanderers who, though their country has already 
31 



482 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

been depleted by millions, still leave lier to the figure of seventy 
thousand annually. It seems that in Ireland much surprise is 
expressed at the movement never ceasing. Providence will end 
it in its own good time ; if God still allows it, it is surely for the 
accomplishment of his own mighty and benevolent designs. 

To conclude, then, this long chapter, there is only one ques- 
tion to be put, which demands a few words, but words, in our 
opinion at least, of vast importance, and which we would give 
all that is ours to give, to see promptly and energetically attend- 
ed to : ■ Has Ireland profited by this so-often mentioned emi- 
gration to the extent she should have profited ? And what 
ought Irishmen to do in order to increase the advantages de- 
rived from it ? 

We must confess that, up to the present, the benefit is far 
from what it ought to have been, and the cause of this lies in 
want of organization and association. They have seemed to let 
God work for them without any cooperation on their part ; for 
God's, as we saw, was the plan, and he forced them, as it were, 
to carry out his design. They went at the work blindly, merely 
following the impulse of circumstances, with no preparatory 
organization, and less still of association. And even now, when 
they are spread out over such vast territories in such mighty 
multitudes, as yet they have given no sign of the least desire of 
attempting even something like a combined effort to accelerate 
the work of Providence. The only signs of life so far given have 
been violent and spasmodic, directly opposed to the genius of the 
race, which, as we have endeavored to prove, has nothing revo- 
lutionary in its character, and is not given to dark plots and 
godless conspiracies. 

Unfortunately, also, they do not seem naturally adapted to a 
spirit of steady and long-continued or systematic association. In 
this, chiefiy, does their race dififer from the Scandinavian stock, 
which is grafted on system, combination, and steadiness, in pur- 
suit of the object in hand. 

But Avhy not begin, at least, to make an effort in that direc- 
tion ? The Latin races, in which runs so much Celtic blood, are 
powerful to organize, as the Pomans of old, and the French and 
Spaniards of to-day, have so often proved. The Irish have been 
infused with plenty of foreign blood, after their many national 
catastrophes, although we believe that their primitive charac- 
teristics have always overcome all foreign elements introduced 
among them ; and, what the race could scarcely attempt ages 
ago, is possible now. Moreover, there is nothing in the leanings 
of race which may not be overcome, and sure without any radi- 
cal change a nation can adapt itself to the necessities of the time, 
and to altered circumstances. Let the Irish see what they might 
efiect toward the resurrection of their native country, if they 



THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 483 

only seriously began at last to organize and associate for that 
purpose. They would thus turn the immense forces of their 
nation, now scattered over the world, to the real advantage of 
their birthplace. In union is strength ; but union can only be 
promoted by association, j)articularly when the elements to be 
united are so far apart. 

For such an object do we believe that God gave man in these 
late days the destroyers of space — the steam-engine and the elec- 
tric telegraph. Those powerful agents of unification were un- 
known to mankind until God decreed that his children dispersed 
through the earth should be more compactly united. To the 
Catholic they were given, in the first place, to serve God's first 
purpose by making the Church firmer in her unity and more 
eflfective in the propagation of truth ; but, after all, the mission 
of the Irish to-day is only a branch of the mission of the 
Church, and, if only on that account, are the missionaries deserv- 
ing of all honor and respect. 

If in the designs of Providence the time has at last arrived 
for the dwelling of the children of Japhet in the tents of Sem, 
and for putting an end to the terrible evils dating from the dis- 
persion at Babel and the confusion of tongues, the object of these 
great scientific discoveries is still more apparent. At all events, 
organization and association are clearly needed for the resurrec- 
tion of Ireland, and the sooner a step is taken in that direction 
the better. 

But, what association would we propose ? "What should be 
its immediate and most practicable objects ? These questions 
we do not feel competent to answer. Let Irishmen be once con- 
vinced that organization is the great lever to work for the rais- 
ing up of their down-trodden nation, and they will know best 
how to use this powerful instrument. The leaders of the nation 
in that holy enterprise should, in our own opinion, be its spirit- 
ual leaders. They know their country, and they love it ; they 
undoubtedly possess the confidence of their countrymen : they, 
then, should be the natural originators of those great schemes. 
And what other leaders does Ireland possess, what body like 
them, acceptable to the nation, and neither to be bought by 
money nor office ? 

This first remark naturally presupposes another : that the 
object of those associations, being approved of by the religious 
guides of the people, cannot be other than holy, and consequent- 
ly require no secrecy of any kind. They must be patent to the 
world, as not being antagonistic to any established law or au- 
thority. Every man desirous of becoming a member of the asso- 
ciation should know beforehand what is proposed to be done, and 
how far his consent is to be given. 

One other important point strikes us : the centre of organiza- 



484 THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS. 

tion sliould be in Ireland. Ireland is to be benefited by it, and 
there tlie effort sbould naturally begin, wbere its results will 
fall. As for the particular direction wbicli tbose efforts should 
take, the detail of the whole enterprise, the plan of the cam- 
paign — all this lies beyond us, and a sketch of it would most 
probably be a mere chimera. 

One concluding word may be said, however, on a subject 
which has often been present to the writer's mind : The fearful 
oppression of the nation began by robbing the people of their 
lands and making them paupers : one of the first aims of associa- 
tion, then, should evidently be the raising of the people up by 
the restoration, in great part at least, of the soil to the native 
race. 

It is not our purpose to pro'pose a new confiscation now, by 
way of remedying the old ones ; but England has allowed them 
to buy back the land of their fathers in the " Encumbered Es- 
tates Courts," and by the law recently passed which disestablished 
the Irish Protestant Church ? Is there no room for a plan 
whereby Irishmen, who have grown rich in foreign countries, 
may become purchasers of the land thus offered for sale ? And, 
in reply to the natural and powerful objection to such a plan on 
the score of distance from their native land, and the natural re- 
pugnance to return and live there, and break up new ties, which 
are now old, and have made them what they are, could not the 
fathers spare one son at least, whom they might devote to the 
noble purpose of becoming Irish again, and settling on an Irish 
estate, and marrying there ? This would seem an easy and sim- 
ple manner of recreating a Catholic gentry in the island. 

This is merely a hint thrown out to exemplify what we mean 
by associations for the purpose of raising Ireland up again ; the 
many possible objects of national organization will occur to any 
mind giving a moment's reflection to it. This subject will occu- 
py our attention at greater length in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

MOEAL FOECE ALL-SUFFICIENT FOR THE EESUKEECTION" OF IRELAND. 

This cliapter will be devoted to tlie island itself. For many 
centuries it was liappy in its seclusion and separation from the 
rest of Europe : in these days it necessarily forms a part of the 
whole mass of Japhetic races ; its isolation is no longer possible ; 
and, in the opinion of many, it is destined once again to become 
a spot illustrious and happy. The consideration of how that lus- 
tre and happiness are to come upon it is the only task still left us. 

Whoever takes into consideration the advantages it already 
enjoys, and compares its present situation with that of a hundred 
years back, cannot fail to be struck with the remarkable change 
for the better which has taken place between the two periods. 
Ireland still suffers, and suffers sorely, and the world still speaks 
with justice of her wrongs ; but, in whatever light they may appear 
to those who love their country, no one can pretend that it still 
groans under the weight of tyranny which has formed the bur- 
den of her history. And, while acknowledging this beneficial 
change in her condition, they must wonder at the same time how 
small was the share which the natives themselves had in bring- 
ing it about, although their activity never relaxed, and they had 
great and good men working for their cause. What, in truth, 
did it ? 

The first point which claims our attention is how effectually 
the moral force of what is called liberal thought dealt a death- 
blow to the penal laws half a century before any of them were 
erased from the statute book. 

Liberal thought may be said to have originated in England, 
whence it passed over to France, to be disseminated and take 
root throughout Europe by means of the mighty influence then 
exercised by the great nation. The chief object which animated 
the minds of those who first labored for its admission into mod- 
ern European principles is not for us to consider here. There 
is no doubt that this chief object was of a loosening and delete- 
rious nature : namely, to ruin Christian faith, to change all the 



486 MOEAL rOECE. 

old social and jjolitical axioms held by Christendom, and to create 
'a new society imbued with what now goes by the name of mod- 
ern ideas. It is not necessary to point out the frightful impru- 
dence as well as criminality of many of those who were the 
pioneers of the movement. We must only take the new princi- 
ples as a great fact, destined yet to effect a radical change in the 
ideas of men of all races, a change already begun in Europe* 

Liberal thought, we say, originated in England; and it 
would be easy to show that there it was the result partly of Prot- 
estantism, partly of indifferentism, the ultimate consequence of the 
great principle of private judgment. 

This became manifest in Great Britain, from the beginning of 
the eighteenth century, and, as was previously shown, what is 
called the British Constitution was the result and outgrowth of 
deep political thought matured in minds indifferent to religion, 
of men who were as little Protestants as any thing else. But 
they were deeply possessed by a sense of conservatism and mod- 
eration in the application of the most radical principles, which 
later on the fiery Gallic mind carried to their final and most dis- 
astrous consequences. 

But, in whatever garb it may have appeared, liberalism was 
clearly the essence of the British Constitution, as established 
after all the civil and dynastic wars of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries. The leaders of the English nation happened 
at the time to be fully wedded to aristocratic ideas, and accord- 
ingly they refused to recognize all the consequences of their 
principles, and to see them carried out to the full. 

It was admitted that the king reigned, but did not govern ; 
that the nation governed by its representati^^es ; that those rep- 
resentatives were created by election; that a nation could not be 
taxed without its free consent ; that thought, religious thought 
chiefly, was free ; that toleration, therefore, could admit of no 
exception in point of religious doctrine ; and all the other mod- 
ern principles which have at length been admitted, though not 
always observed, as governmental axioms by all European na- 
tions. 

As long as those axioms were in the close keeping of English 
patricians, some of their consequences were far from being fully 
evolved ; but certain Frenchmen, Yoltaire among others, hap- 
pening to cross the Straits of Dover, returned with them, and, 
the wretched government of Louis X Y. being not only too weak 
to withstand, but even conniving at, the boldness of the new phi- 
losophers, the French language, which was then spoken all over 
Europe, carried with it from mouth to mouth the new and fasci- 
nating doctrine of the emancipation of thought. 

None of those writers, indeed, undertook to plead the cause 
of unfortunate Ireland. Yoltaire threw the whole of France into 



MORAL FOECE. 487 

agitation, nay, all Europe, to the wilds of Russia, by taking up 
the case of the Protestant Galas, who was condemned to death 
and executed unjustly, as it seems, for the supposed murder of a 
son wdio was inclined to embrace Catholicity ; bat never a word 
did he speak of the suffering which at that time had settled down 
over the whole Irish nation solely for the crime of its religious 
convictions. 

ISTevertheless, toleration became the catch- word with all. It 
rang out loudly from a thousand French pamphlets and ponder- 
ous tomes ; it was caught up and echoed back from England ; it 
penetrated the unkindly atmosphere of Russia even, and was si- 
lently pondered over under the rule of an unbelieving despot. 

It was impossible for Ireland not to derive some benefit from 
all this. It took a long time, indeed, for emancipation of thought 
to cross that narrow channel which divided the "sister" islands; 
for, at the precise period when the doctrine was loudest in France, 
the most atrocious penal laws were being executed in Ireland, 
and there seemed no hope for the suffering nation. 

" But, toward the end of that eventful eighteenth century, 
the breath of that magic word, toleration, at last was felt on the 
shores of Erin. When it was in the mouths of all Europe, when 
English clergymen had thoroughly imbibed the new doctrine, 
when even Scotch ministers began to thaw under its genial in- 
fluence, and become " liberal theologians," how could an Irish 
magistrate think of hanging a friar, or transporting a priest, or 
imposing a heavy fine on a Catholic who committed the heinous 
offence of hearing mass, or absenting himself from the services 
of the Established Church? At last, the "Mass-rock" was no 
longer the only spot whereon the divine victim of expiation 
could be offered up ; and it soon came to be known that, to by- 
lanes and obscure houses in the cities numbers of persons flocked 
on Sundays, presided over by their own Sogarth Aroon. On 
one occasion, already noticed, the floor of a rickety house, where 
they were worshipping, gave way, to the killing and maiming 
of many ; thenceforth. Catholics were allowed to assemble in 
public to the knowledge of all, and, though "discoverers" were 
still legally entitled to denounce and prosecute them, there was 
small chance of a verdict against them.* 

Thus was it owing to a great moral force — whether good or 
bad is not the question now — that the penal laws first became 
obsolete ; and Irishmen had absolutely nothing whatever to do 
in the matter. I^ot a single pamphlet, demanding toleration, 
and proclaiming the rights of religious freedom, ever, to our 
knowledge, issued from the Irish press at the time. JSTo book, 
written by an Irish author, advocating the same, was ever print- 
ed clandestinely, as were so many French books, at first appear- 
ing in Holland, or covertly in France, with a false title-page. 



488 MORAL FORCE. 

When the Yohmteer movement took place, toleration was in 
full sway in Ireland. As was see'n, the question debated in the 
Dungannon Convention referred solely to the extension of the 
elective franchise to Catholics ; and, though this was unjustly 
denied them by the majority of the Volunteers, under the guid- 
ance of the leaders of the movement, there was no question of 
any longer refusing to the native Irish Catholics the right of 
practising their religion freely. This the moral sense of the cen- 
tury had secured to them. 

The attainment of the political franchise was also the result 
of purely moral force, though it required a much longer time in 
its acquisition, as it was a question, not merely of a right indi- 
vidual in its nature, as all natural religious rights are, but one 
affecting external society, and productive of material results of 
great import. 

In this the Irish were not merely passive ; they launched them- 
selves heart and soul on the sea of political agitation. From 
1810 to 1829, the Catholic Association, which embraced men of 
all classes of society, was incessant in its clamor for emancipa- 
tion. The chief object of this association being the political 
franchise, it was felt by all that, sooner or later, that privilege 
must be granted. Meanwhile, the secular enemies of Ireland 
were not idle. Emancipation — that is the political franchise — 
they called a " Utopian dream," which they asserted England 
could not grant. Was it not directly opposed to the coronation- 
oath, nay, to the English Constitution ? The king himself was, 
and publicly declared himself to be, of this opinion. According 
to your thorough-bred Englishman, the state would rather spend 
its last shilling, and sacrihce its last man, than suffer it. How 
many spoke thus, even up to the very day on which Wellington, 
changing his mind perforce, at last proposed the measure ! 

All this opposition was perhaps only to be expected ; but the 
strange thing was that many excellent patriotic Irishmen, Cath- 
olics, laymen as well as clerics and prelates, were opposed to the 
agitation set on foot by O' Council and his friends ; they also 
thought it a " Utopian dream," likely only to bring new calami- 
ties upon their country. They seemed not to see that the refusal 
of emancipation meant in fact the continuance of the small Prot- 
estant minority as the ruling power — the state — in Ireland, 
which, owing to moral force, was no longer so, save in theory. 
In fact, already the majority, that is, almost the whole of Ireland, 
was an immense power. Its members were at liberty to combine 
openly, to show themselves, to speak, to write, to agitate ; they 
were, in a word, a people, and the Protestant minority no longer 
really constituted the state. 

It is true that the majority of Irishmen had for centuries con- 
tinued to act unanimously in their resistance to oppression ; as 



MOEAL FORCE. 489 

was seen, they had been a people from the moment that the 
English kings and Parliaments strove to coerce their religions 
faith, and more particularly from the destruction of clanship. 
They were truly a nation, though without a government of their 
own, and for the greater part of the time bending under the 
most intolerable tyranny. Religion had given them one thought 
and one heart. And now that, owing to the mighty, the irre- 
sistible moral force of liberalism, they could no longer be openly 
persecuted for wishing to remain Catholics, the question arose : 
Were they still to be absolutely nothing in the state ? This was 
the real demand of the Catholic Association, and every one 
ought to have seen its importance and the certainty of success. 

Nevertheless, a great number of sincere Irishmen did not see 
the question in this light, and were covertly or openly opposed 
to the agitation. Ireland appeared to be divided just at a mo- 
mentous crisis. 

The leaders of the association were not themselves altogeth- 
er agreed as to the best mode of putting their question. Some 
were for armed opposition, thinking they could beat England in 
the open field. But the great originator and leader of the move- 
ment sternly opposed so mad a proposition. He was for moral 
force, seeing how clearly and irresistibly, even if unwittingly, it 
was working for their cause. In spite of all adverse circum- 
stances, although the English party and the English nation stood 
up en masse against him, although many Irishmen refused to 
join in the agitation, while some of his best friends wished to 
risk all in a desperate venture, he stood calm, firm, and so confi- 
dent of success, that he caused himself to be returned as member 
for the County Clare to the English Parliament, before even 
emancipation had given him the right of candidature. It was 
immediately after this "unconstitutional" election that the 
boon of emancipation was suddenly granted, contrary to all 
expectation and probability, and O'Connell proudly took his 
seat among the representatives of Ireland in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment. 

If this measure was not carried by a purely moral force, it is 
hard to see how that phrase can be applied to any thing in this 
world. This is not the place to write a history of that memo- 
rable struggle. It is still fresh in the memory of many living 
men. We merely draw a conclusion from what has happened in 
our own time, and one which may be said to be a clear inference 
from the circumstances of the case, and to which no one can 
ofler any serious objection. This conclusion is, the omnipotence 
of moral force in gaining for Ireland so much of liberty, of po- 
litical and social privileges, as was finally granted her. 

This victory won for the Irish Catholics the acknowledgment 
on the part of England that they were a factor in the state. The 



490 MORAL FOECE. 

next question wliicli naturally presented itself was, " What was 
to be their exact position in the state ? " 

There are many answers to this, even in modern ideas. In 
iDurelj democratic countries suffrage is universal, all have a po- 
litical vote, and the majority is supposed to rule. In countries 
where the government is oligarchical or aristocratic, rank, 
wealth, and position, are " privileged ; " the great mass is de- 
prived of a vote. Yet, even in those countries, in accordance 
with the modern idea, blood is not every thing ; a certain num- 
ber of plebeians are admitted to a share in public aifairs, and 
their number is greater or, smaller as the struggle, which is al- 
ways going on between the few and the many, wavers to this 
side or to that. Thus, in the English Parliament there is often 
an " electoral " or " reform " question discussed and agitated. 
But the leaders of the Catholic Association boldly advocated a 
question prior to those — what at the time was called the repeal 
of the Union, and is now known as " home-rule." 

Must Ireland continue to be governed by laws enacted in 
England ? The number of her special representatives is com- 
paratively so small, her Catholic aspirations meet with such 
deaf ears in the majority of the members, that, as long as Ire- 
land is without her own Parliament, she cannot be called a free 
country. 

Moreover, according to modern ideas, self-government seems 
to be admitted as an axiom ; all countries have a right to it, 
under the limitation of constitutional enactments, either in " con- 
federacies " or in " imperial states." Why should Ireland alone 
be deprived of such a boon ? 

It is known how O'Connell suddenly grasped the question 
and mastered it. His first repeal association was suppressed on 
the instant by a proclamation of the Irish Secretary. O'Connell 
bowed to the proclamation, and for the first organization substi- 
tuted another called " the Irish Yolunteers for the Pepeal of the 
Union." This met with the same fate as the first. The great 
agitator then took refuge in "repeal breakfasts," and declared 
his intention, if the government " thought fit to proclaim down 
breakfasts, to resort to a political lunch, and, if political luncheon 
be equally dangerous to the peace of the viceroy, he would have 
political dinners ; if the dinners be proclaimed, we must, said 
he, like certain sanctified dames, resort to tea and tracts." 

The " breakfasts " were suppressed, and O'Connell was ar- 
rested. The prosecution, however, was soon abandoned, and 
for the moment, despairing of success in advocating repeal, he 
came down to the " Eeform party," from which he obtained at 
first some great advantages for Ireland — the administration of 
Lord Mulgrave, the best the island had known for centuries, and 
the appointment of many Catholics to high offices in the state. 



MOEAL FORCE. 491 

It is not necessary to relate the circumstances whicli finally 
drove O'Connell back npon his original plan, and the formation, 
in April, 1840, of the " Loyal I^ational Kepeal Association." 

Within a short time three million associates were contrib- 
uting annually to the national fund, and a scene was witnessed 
which the most devoted lover of Erin could never have antici- 
pated. It would be useless to search the annals of mankind for 
a more startling exhibition of purely moral force. The causes 
of its failure will appear causes altogether of a temporary and 
unexpected character, when we come to examine them. 

But the stupendous spectacle itself was enough to impress 
the beholder with the irresistible effect which it could not fail to 
produce. A whole nation obedient to the voice of one man ! 
— and that a man who had never been invested with a state dig- 
nity, proud only of having once represented a poor Irish county 
in the English Parliament ; who was eminently a man of the 
people, identified in every way with the people, speaking a lan- 
guage they could all understand, speaking to hundreds of thou- 
sands who had come at his call to listen to him : at one time 
nearly a million of them surroundifed him on the hill of Tara. 

Had a demagogue stood in his place, how could he have re- 
sisted the temptation of using such power to effect a thorough 
'revolution ? O'Connell had only to utter the word, and those 
immense masses of men would have swept the whole island as 
with a besom of destruction. The impetuosity of the Irish 
character when placed in such circumstances is well known, and 
O'Connell knew it better than any man living at the time. He 
showed himself truly heroic in the constant moderation of his 
words, even in scenes the most exciting, when a look from him 
might have lashed the nation into madness. 

To bring out more clearly the stamp and greatness of the 
man, compare his conduct with that of the leaders in the great 
French Revolution of 1Y93. ]^ot one of them ever possessed a 
tithe, not merely of the great Irishman's honesty of purpose, but 
even of his real authority over the people ; yet,* what frightful 
convulsions did they not bring upon the state in the days of 
their brief popularity ? Throughout the whole repeal movement, 
when millions of people obeyed implicitly one leader, ready to 
do his will at any moment, there was never a single breach of 
the peace, never an attempt at outrage, never a threat of retalia- 
tion. 

The only difficulty is where to bestow the greater admiration, 
on O'Connell or the people ; for, if O'Connell towered almost 
above humanity in his never-varying moderation, with such a 
powerful engine in his hands, the people oftered a spectacle 
which would be looked for in vain elsewhere in the history of 
man, that of a whole nation swayed by the most excited feelings, 



492 MORAL FOECE. 

one in tlioiight, in aims, in the bitter memory of the past, con- 
scious of their irresistible power in the present, yet never yield- 
ing to passion, but dispersing quietly after listening to the im- 
passioned harangues of their leader, to return to their homes and 
resume their ordinary occupations. Any impartial man, who 
has read history at all, must acknowledge that this spectacle is 
unexampled, and in itself vindicates the Irish character from the 
foolish aspersions so lavishly cast upon it, and so thoughtlessly 
repeated still. 

One great fact was brought out by those demonstrations 
which afterward appeared so barren of result, namely, the exist- 
ence of a nation full of life and energy, of a surprising vigor, 
and at the same time governed by stern principles as well as 
swayed by emotion. It would be idle to pretend that they 
were a non-entity, save as forming a part of the British Empire, 
existing on sufferance as it were, merely to add to the greatness 
and the glory of the English nation. They possessed a life of 
their own. That life had, as was seen, been instilled into them 
by their religious convictions alone ; it had lain dormant for 
more than a century ; and notv^ it burst forth in the view of the 
world, to proclaim that the Irish nation still existed. And this 
wonderful resurrection was due to moral force alone. 

Though the Irish people then appeared so different from that 
humbled, crushed mass of oppressed beings, who, a hundred 
years before, lay so completely at the mercy of their masters, it 
was, nevertheless, the same people, and the difference w^as purely 
one of circumstances. Had they been allowed in the previous 
century to manifest their feelings, as a happy change in the state 
of affairs now permitted them, they would assuredly have acted 
in exactly the same manner. And this reflection tends to confirm 
the opinion, several times here expressed, that the Irish people 
existed all along, and that the most adverse circumstances had 
never succeeded in destroying it. 

Meanwhile, O'Connell was the sovereign of that nation, and 
one whose power over his subjects was greater than that of any 
of the kings or emperors who occupied the various thrones of 
Europe at the time. Later events proved how precarious was 
the authority of all those who appeared to hold the fate of mill- 
ions in their hands ; the authority of O'Connell alone was 
deeply rooted in the heart of his nation. From the humble 
position of a Kerry lawyer, he had gradually risen to the proud 
preeminence which he occupied in the eyes of Europe, and he 
owed it solely to that moral force of which he was so sincere an 
advocate, and which he knew so well how to wield. 

But how came all the high hopes then so ardently enter- 
tained by the friends of Ireland to be so suddenly dashed to 
the ground, and O'Connell to die of a broken heart '? 



MORAL FORCE. 493 

It seems, indeed, to be tlie opinion of Irishmen even, that 
O'Connell's theory was faulty ; that moral force alone conld not 
restore Ireland to her lawful position among nations ; that, in 
fact, he failed by his very moderation, and that the bitterness 
which clouded his last days was the natural consequence of his 
false and delusive expectations. Such seems now to be the 
almost universal opinion. 

Yet, in all his wonderfuV career, only one fault can be brought 
against him. Yielding, on one occasion, in 1843, to the exu- 
berance of his feelings, "he committed himself to a specific 
promise that within six months repeal would be an accom- 
plished fact." 

This promise, rashly given, and showing no result, is said to 
have cooled down the enthusiasm of the people, who, from that 
time, lost confidence in their leader ; and to this alone is the 
utter failure of the great agitation ascribed. 

But there is so little of real truth in this assertion that, when, 
on his well-known imprisonment, after the law lords, in the 
British House of Peers, declared that the conviction of O'Con- 
nell and his colleagues was wrong, he was restored to liberty, 
the writer just quoted confesses that " overwhelming demon- 
strations of unchanged affection and personal attachment poured 
in upon him from his countrymen. Their faith in his devotion 
to Ireland was increased a hundred-fold." 

It is true that the same writer, Mr. A. M. O'SulIivan, adds 
that " their faith in the efficiency of his policy, or the surety of 
his promise, was gone ; " but to reconcile this phrase with what 
precedes it, it must not be taken absolutely. The want of faith 
here spoken of was restricted to the members of a new party, 
which had been organized chiefiy during the imprisonment of 
the great leader, the " Young Ireland party," the new advocates 
of physical force against England, composed of the ardent and, 
most surely, well-intentioned young men, who failed so egre- 
giously a few years later. 

This party was the chief cause of O'Connell's failure, coupled 
with the awful famine which followed soon after, and left the 
Irish small desire for political agitation with grim Death staring 
them in the face, and the main question before them one of 
avoiding starvation and utter ruin. 

Both causes, however, were purely of a temporary nature, 
and the efficacy of moral force remained strong as ever, and, in 
fact, the only thing possible. 

The Young Ireland party could not exist long, as its avowed 
policy was so rash, so ill-founded, and poorly carried out, that 
the mere breath of British power was enough to dissipate it 
hopelessly in a moment. Moreover, it placed itself in open 
antagonism to the mass of the Catholic clergy, and appeared to 



494 MOEAL FOECE. 

have so ill studied the history of- the country that its members 
did not know the real power which religion exercised over their 
countrymen. They could not but fail, and their futile attempt 
only served to render worse the condition of the country they 
were ready to die for. 

It would be enough to add here, of other subsequent attempts 
of the same nature, that no real hope for the complete resurrec- 
tion of Ireland could be looked to from such abortive and still- 
born conspiracies ; especially when the alliance entered into by 
some of them with the revolutionary party of European socialists 
and atheists is taken into account, men from whom nothing but 
disorder, anarchy, and crime, can be expected. Thus, those who 
wish well to the Irish cause have only moral force to fall back 
upon. 

It is needless to do more than mention the passing nature of 
the frightful calamity of famine and consequent expatriation, 
which have been sufficiently dwelt upon. The Irish race has 
passed through ordeals more trying than either of these ; it has 
survived them, and increased in numbers after all previous 
calamities, as it doubtless will after this last, when God thinks 
proper to abate in the people the eagerness they still feel for 
leaving their native country. 

All the progress made by Ireland, so far, is due, therefore, 
solely to the kind action of Divine Providence, which is generally 
called the " logic of events," aided by men endowed with pru- 
dence and energy. It would be superfluous for our purpose to 
detail at length several other progressive steps made subsequent- 
ly, which the mad attempt of the party of physical force would 
have effectually prevented if open tyranny were as easy a thing 
in these days as it once was. The establishment of the "Encum- 
bered Estates Courts," and the disestablishment of the Irish 
Protestant Church, are the chief measures alluded to : the first 
so fruitful of good to Ireland since its adoption, and the second 
destined to be no less so. It is useless to remark that physical 
force had nothing to do with their introduction, and that the 
British statesmen who advocated and carried them through were 
swayed only by that unseen power which is said by Holy Script- 
ure to " hold the heart of kings in its hands." Let the Irish do 
their part, and Heaven will continue to smile on them. 

Since it is to this unseen power that all the improvement 
now visible in the condition of the Irish nation is due, it is only 
natural to expect from it every thing that is still wanting. For 
we are far from thinking that nothing more is to be done, and 
that all to be desired has been obtained. That the nation is still 
dissatisfied, is plain enough ; and it must be right in not feeling 
contented with the various measures for its improvement ten- 
dered it so far. The voice of its natural leaders — of the prelates 



MORAL FOECE. 495 

and clergy — proclaims that there are many things to change, and 
many new measures to be introduced. 

The first and foremost of these is a thorough remedy for the 
disgraceful state of pauperism to which the great majority of the 
Irish nation is yet reduced. Tliat pauperism was wilfully estab- 
lished, and this national crime of England stands unatoned for 
still. It would be unjust to say that the policy which produced 
it is pursued to-day by the English Government ; "we sincerely 
believe, on the contrary, that the state of things which has existed 
for the last two centuries is seriously deplored by many of those 
Avho, under God, hold in their keeping the destiny of millions 
of men. But it is surprising that so many projects, so many 
attempts at legislation, the writing of so many wdse books, dis- 
cussions so many and so exhaustive of the evil, should all result 
in leaving the evil almost as it stood. 

If we listen to those who know Ireland perfectly, who have 
either spent their lives in the country, or traversed its surface 
leisurely and intelligently, it would seem as though the old de- 
scriptions of her in the time of her greatest misfortunes would 
still be appropriate and true. 

" No devastated province of the Roman Empire," said Father 
Lavelle, but yesterday, in his "Irish Landlord," " ever presented 
half the wretchedness of Ireland. At this day, the mutilated 
Fellah of Egypt, the savage Hottentot and New-Hollander, the 
live chattel of Cuba, enjoy a paradise in comparison with the 
Irish peasant, that is to say, with the bulk of the Irish nation." 

But, as this short passage deals only in generalities, and as 
there may be some suspicion of the warm nature of the writer 
having given a higher color to his words than was warranted by 
the facts, let us listen to the less impassioned utterances of trav- 
ellers who have recently visited the island : let us see the Irish at 
home in their towns and in the country. 

I. In towns and cities : The most Rev. Archbishop of Dub- 
lin, writing in 185Y to Lord St. Leonards, on the state of his flock 
in Dublin, says : " Were your lordship to ' visit some of the 
ruined lanes and streets of Dublin, your heart would thrill with 
horror at the picture of human woe which would present itself." 

And in a pastoral letter, November 27, 1861, he spoke of " tens 
of thousands of human beings, destitute of all the comforts of 
life, who are to be met with at every step in all great towns and 
cities. If you enter the wretched abodes, where they live, you 
will find that they have no fuel, that they are unprovided with 
beds and other fm-niture, and that generally they have not a sin- 
gle blanket to protect them from the cold." 

Abbe Perraud, after a thorough examination of the subject, 
wrote, in 1864, in " Ireland under English Rule : " 

" The poor quarters of Cork, Limerick, and Drogheda, present 



496 MOEAL FOECE. 

tlie same spectacle as Dublin, and justify the sad proverbial celeb- 
rity of Irish, rags.' Dirt, negligence, and want of care, doubt- 
less, go a long way in giving to destitution in Ireland its repul- 
sive and hideous form ; but who is unaware that continued and 
hopeless destitution engenders, as of necessity, listlessness and 
carelessness, and that, to enter into a struggle with poverty, there 
must be at least some chance of carrying oif the victory ? " 

A German Protestant, Dr. Julius Rodenberg, writing in 
1861, expressed his astonishment at the sight of Ireland's pov- 
erty, as he saw it in the streets of Dublin, although he had 
doubtless read a great deal about it previously. " You are in a 
country," he says, " whence people emigrate by thousands, while 
fields, of such an extent and power of production as would sup- 
port them all, lie fallow." 

And with respect to the progress already made, M. de Beau- 
mont had remarked many years before that in Ireland a certain 
relative progress was quite compatible with the continued exist- 
ence of pauperism among the lower classes. " One single cause," 
he remarks, " suffices to explain why the agricultural population 
becomes poorer, while the prosperity of the rich is on tlie in- 
crease : it is that all improvement in the land is profitable solely 
to the proprietor, who exacts more rent from the farmer in pro- 
portion as he works the land into a better state." 

Since M. de Beaumont wrote, the pauperism in the cities has 
assumed a more wretched and repulsive form, in consequence of 
the crowding there of poor peasants who had been evicted from 
their small farms and fled to the nearest city or town with the 
hope of finding there at least charity. 

"For the last ten years," wrote Abbe Perraud, in 1861, 
" there has been taking place in the large cities an accumulation 
of poor as fatal to their health as to their morality. They are 
mostly country people whom eviction has driven from the coun- 
try, who have been unable to emigrate, and who were unwilling 
to shut themselves up immediately in the workhouses. The 
resources they procure for themselves, by doing odd work, are so 
completely insufficient, that it is impossible to be surprised at 
their destitution." 

Dr. Rodenberg, describing the state of the poor country peo- 
ple crowded in the "Liberties of Dublin," says of the rooms in 
which {hey live : " In those holes the most wretched and pitiable 
laborers imaginable live ; they often lie by hundreds together on 
the bare ground." 

Such citations might be sadly multiplied, but those given are 
sufficient as descriptive of the state of the poor Irish in the 
cities. Let us now see how the peasants live in the country in 
many parts of Ireland : 

II. " The destitution of the agricultural classes," writes Abbe 



MOEAL FOKCE. 497 

Perraud, from personal observation, " in order to be riglitly 
appreciated, must be seen in the boggy and momitainoiis regions 
of Munster, of Connauglit, and of the western portion of 
Ulster. 

" The ordinary dwelling of the small tenant, of the day-labor- 
er, in that part of Ireland, answers with the utmost precision the 
description of it twenty years ago given by M. de Beaumont : 
'Let the reader picture to himself four walls of dried mud, 
which the rain easily reduces to its primitive condition; a little 
thatch or a few cuts of turf form the roof; a rude hole in the 
roof forms the chimney, and more frequently there is no other 
issue for the smoke than the door of the dwelling itself. One 
solitary room holds father, mother, grandfather, and children. 
ISTo furniture is to be seen ; a single litter, usually composed of 
grass or straw, serves for the whole family. Five or six half-na- 
ked children may be seen crouching over a poor fire. In the 
midst of them lies a filthy pig, the only inhabitant at its ease, 
because its element is filth itself.' 

" Into how many dwellings of this kind have we not ourselves 
penetrated — especially in the counties of Kerry, Mayo, and Done- 
gal — more than once obliged to stoop down to the ground, in 
order to penetrate into these cabins, the entrance to which is so 
low that they look more like the burrows of beasts than dwell- 
ings made for man ! 

" Upon the road from Kilkenny to Grenaugh, in the vicinity 
of those beautiful lakes, at the entrance of those parks, to which, 
for extent and richness, neither England nor Scotland can prob- 
ably ofier any thing equal, we have seen other dwellings. A few 
branches of trees, interlaced and leaning upon the slope in the 
road, a few cuts of turf, and a few stones picked up in the fields, 
compose these wretched huts — ^less spacious, and perhaps less 
substantial, than that of the American savage." 

At the time of Abbe Perraud's visit, a correspondent of the 
Dublin Saunders News-Letters^ who was commissioned to inquire 
into the condition of the peasants, gave the following reply, which, 
as the abbe justly remarks, is but the faithful echo of all the de- 
scriptions made within the last half-century : 

" The inhabitants of Erris appear to be the most wretched 
of all human beings. Their cabins, their patched and tattered 
clothes, their broken-down gait — every thing bears witness to 
their poverty. Their beds consist of a few bits of wood crossed 
one upon the other, supported by two heaps of stones, and cov- 
ered with straw ; their whole bedclothes a miserable, worn-out 
quilt, without any blankets. . . . But there is nothing in Ireland 
like the habitations which the people of the village of Eallmore 
have made for themselves, who have been evicted by Mr. Palmer. 
They are composed of masses of granite, picked up on the shore^ 
33 



498 MOEAL FORCE. 

and roiiglily laid one by the otheT. These cabins are so low that 
a man cannot stand upright in them ; so narrow that they can 
hardly hold three or four persons." 

After all, F. Lavelle was guilty of no exaggeration in stating 
that the hut of the Hottentot was better than that of the Irish 
peasant. But, in the district of Gweedore, northeast of County 
Donegal, the state of the peasantry is more deplorably wretched 
still than in any other part of Ireland. At the time of a cele- 
brated parliamentary inquiry into the matter in 1858, a London- 
derry newspaper stated that "there are in Donegal about four 
thousand adults, of both sexes, who are obliged to go barefoot 
during the winter, in the ice and snow — pregnant women and 
aged people in habitual danger of death from the cold. . . . It is 
rare to find a man with a calico shirt ; but the distress of the 
women is still greater, if that be possible. There are many hun- 
dreds of families in which five or six grown-up women have 
among them no more than a single dress to go out in. . , . 
There are about five hundred families who have but. one bed 
each — in which father, mother, and children, without distinction 
of age or sex, are crowded pell-mell together." 

If from the dwellings and clothing of the peasantry we pass 
to their food, there is no need of adding any thing to what was 
said on this point when describing the periodical famines. One 
detail, however, not yet mentioned, deserves to be recorded : 

" In the district of Gweedore," says Abbe Perraud, " our eyes 
were destined to witness the use of sea-weed. Stepping once 
into a cabin, in which there was no one but a little girl charged 
with the care of minding her younger brothers, and getting 
ready the evening meal, we found upon the fire a pot full oi 
doiilamaun ready cooked ; we asked to taste it, and some was 
handed to us on a little platter. 

" This weed, when well dressed, produces a kind of viscous 
juice ; it has a brackish taste, and savors strongly of salt water. 
We were told in the country that the only use of it is to increase, 
when mixed with potatoes, the mass of aliment given to the 
stomach. The longer and more dijfficult the work of the stomach, 
the less frequent are its calls. It is a kind of compromise with 
hunger; the people are able neither to suppress it nor to satisfy 
it ; they endeavor to cheat it. We have also been assured that 
this weed cannot be eaten alone ; it must be mixed with vegeta- 
bles, since of itself it has no nutritive properties whatever." 

How long is such a state of things likely to continue ? It 
has already existed long enough to be a disgrace to the much- 
vaunted benevolence of the nineteenth century. A sure and 
radical remedy must be found for it ; and, as it has been already 
so long delayed, it should be found the more promptly. It 
seems that the tenure of land lies at the bottom of the question, 



MOEAL rORCE. 499 

and tliat respect for wliat are called " established rights " oifers 
the main difficulty. Those rights, indeed, were founded on the 
cruellest wrong and the most flagrant injustice ; but as posses- 
sion is " nine points of the English law," and so long a time has 
passed since the land changed hands, prescription must be ad- 
mitted and let them be called rights ; nor can any man in his 
senses ask for a violent subversion of society for the sake of 
lighting an old wrong. 

But it has ever been a maxim of jurisprudence that summum 
jus, summa injuria / and this axiom finds its full explanation 
in the present case, when it is considered that the jus is on the 
side of a comparatively small number of men, for the most part 
absentee landlords, while the injuria leans to the great mass of 
the primitive owners of the soil. The time-honored policy of 
the English Government, that all the open abuses of landlordism 
should be watched over and protected with the most jealous care, 
while, on the other hand, the wretched farmer and cottier is 
supposed to have no rights to defend and guard, should be 
abandoned at once and forever, with a firmness that can leave no 
room for doubt or equivocation, if the restoration of confidence 
on the part of the Irish is esteemed any thing worth. 

But, if for no other motive, at least for the sake of securing 
peace and order in Ireland, a remedy must be found. There is 
no reason why the Irish should longer remain a nation of pau- 
pers ; and, although some may still pretend that the fault and its 
remedy lie with themselves, unprejudiced men will readily 
acknowledge that the fault lay first, at least, at England's door 
— a fact which the London Times has conceded often and pro- 
claimed loudly enough. 

Let British statesmen, then, devise proper means for such an 
end without social commotion, with as little disturbance of pri- 
vate rights as possible ; for the object is an. imperious necessity. 
It seems that the latest law enacted with this view is not the 
measure that was required ; is totally inadequate in its pro- 
visions, scope, and extent. In such a case it is always open to 
legislators to introduce a new and more satisfactory measure ; 
and moral force will surely bring this about, provided it is true 
to itself. We confess to having no scheme of our own to set 
forth ; but Irishmen are free, nay entitled, to speak, to write on, 
and discuss the subject ; and a serious, steady, but lawful agita- 
tion of the question will surely find its true and final solution. 
The last G-alway election, notwithstanding the temporary 
triumph of Judge Keogh, was a beginning in the right direc- 
tion. 

There is no need here of revolution, of what the French call 
une jaquerie, of arming the populace for the purpose of violently 
ejecting the great land-owners, '^o Irishman has ever stood for 



500 MOEAL FOECE. 

SO calamitous a remedy. The aid of the Internationalists will 
certainly never be called in by the true children of Erin for any 
purpose whatever. It seems that the great and holy Pontiff, 
Pius IX., made this remark to the Prince of Wales, at their last 
interview at the Vatican, and, according to the report, the 
prince fully admitted its truth as far, at least, as he, by any out- 
ward sign, could show. 

The question is one of pure justice, to be settled within the 
limits of order and law ; and surely, when all admit that the 
evil is so crying, that a remedy must be found, one will be 
found, which, while it does no real injury to any person, will 
bring comfort and relief to the most deserving and suffering 
race of men — the Irish peasantry. We will soon see how. 

But the Irishman is not only physically destitute ; he is also 
destitute mentally ; and, if the first case calls for a prompt 
remedy, the second is no less urgent. Pauperism and ignorance 
were the two terrible engines so long worked by England for 
the degradation and final destruction of the Irish race. Our 
readers have seen how persistently was education, of any kind, 
refused to the natives. The Universities of Dublin and Drog- 
heda in the fourteenth century, the cathedral schools, founded 
by the Anglo-ISTormans, in the same age, carefully excluded the 
Irish from their benefits. And, when the Reformation set in, 
with its long series of oppressions, no Catholic could share in 
the new foundations of the Tudors and the Stuarts without first 
abjuring his religion. Penal statute after penal statute made of 
all the shifts, to which the Irish were driven in order to educate 
their children, so many crimes, punishable by death or transpor- 
tation. That, under such a state of things, they could remain 
Catholics without becoming idiots is one ot the most remarkable 
instances on record of buoyancy of spirit and soundness of mind 
on the part of a whole nation. 

From the end of the last century the policy of England 
changed completely in appearance. The foundation and endow- 
ment by the state of the great college of Maynooth, destined for 
the education of the Irish clergy, in 1795, was certainly a step on 
the right road, and if only primary schools for the people had, at 
the same time, been spread all over the island on the same prin- 
ciple of true liberality, the old injustice on the matter of educa- 
tion would have been atoned for and remedied, to a great extent. 

But the Kildare Peace Society and the Church Education 
Society, founded in 1839, showed that the antagonism to the 
Catholic Church in Ireland was far from being dead; nay, was 
as rife as ever. 

Lord Stanley's KationaL Education System, in 1831, at first 
seemed of a character altogether above Protestant or infidel 
proselytism. But, the composition of the various boards under 



MOEAL rOEOE. 501 

that system, and some of the measures adopted, gave evidence 
clearly and soon enough that the education proposed for the Irish 
was not in accordance with the true spirit of the nation, so emi- 
nently Catholic and religious as it is. Hence, the total failure — 
for such it is now admitted by all to have been — of that system 
ought to have opened the eyes of all impartial Englishmen to the 
necessity of starting from the principle that Ireland is Catholic, 
and that the Irish are true children of the Catholic Church. But 
this fact seems not yet recognized or acknowledged by those who 
rule the nation, since, at this very moment, a bill lies before 
Parliament against which all the bishops of Ireland have united 
in raising their voice. The queen's colleges all confess to be a 
wretched failure. 

The injustice of centuries, then, is not, even in these free 
days, when there is such a talk about educating the masses, 
repaired by the English Government ; and this sad fact seems to 
militate against the power of moral force. However, it is but 
right to remember that only those establishments are here spoken 
of which are supported by state aid, and that complete freedom 
of education, independent of such assistance, does actually exist 
in Ireland. Have not the bishops all necessary power to open 
schools of their own ? Have they not even founded a university ? 
Does the state dare to interfere in whatever educational establish- 
ments they think proper to set on foot ? They are now, in that 
regard, as free as the Catholic bishops in the United States ; and 
if the degrees granted by the faculties under their control have 
no value in the eyes of the state, they can easily dispense with 
a concurrence, which is certainly unjustly denied, but which, 
even if granted, would not, in the eyes of the Church, increase 
in the slightest the real value of the diplomas they themselves 
approve. They can afford to wait for the time when complete 
justice will be done ; meanwhile they are freer than Catholic 
bishops at this moment are in all Catholic countries of Europe ; 
and the freedom they enjoy is entirely owing to that moral force 
which, we allege, is sufldcient to insure, sooner or later, all the 
advantages that can be desired. "When the present situation of 
the native Irish, from an educational point of view, is compared 
with the oppression under which they lay a hundred years ago, 
one cannot but wonder how so much has been obtained, and the 
hope, that every thing still wanting is sure to come by the agency 
of the force that has already won so much, cannot be deemed 
vain and illusory. 

Let not, however, what is here said be construed as advising 
Ireland to stand still while schemes of education, evidently god- 
less, are concocted, matured, and passed into laws for their special 
benefit. On the contrary, they must not only continue but 
increase their efforts to cry them down, till they compel a blind 



502 MORAL FOECE. 

and deaf government to open its eyes and ears to a national want 
and a national voice. This is what is meant by the use of moral 
force. 

But, can the complete remedy for pauperism and the solid 
establishment and endowment of truly Catholic schools be ex- 
pected to come from any hands but those of an Irish Legisla- 
ture ? Can they be hoped for as long as the destiny of Ireland 
rests in the hands of an Imperial Parliament whose great major- 
ity can have no real sympathy with the long-oppressed race ? In 
a word, is home-rule necessary to bring about those two great 
measures, which seem absolutely indispensable for the complete 
resurrection of the nation ? 

Our readers already know that, in our opinion, an Irish Par- 
liament would not be a sure panacea for the evils of the country, 
particularly those of pauperism and ignorance, even though that 
Parliament sat in Dublin, and was composed of Irishmen bred 
and born. The evils would not be struck out promptly and 
utterly, although many great improvements would immediately 
follow. 

Some of our reasons for being chary of confidence in the 
success of home-rule have been already given. But we have 
also insisted on the necessity of leaving the question open, and 
admitted that Irishmen have a right to discuss it, and take 
whatever side they may think proper, provided always they 
stand, as they are standing, within the limits of law and order. 

Surely, the Irish have a right to be fairly represented ; mod- 
ern doctrines, as far as they can go, consecrate that right ; and, 
if fair representation is an impossibility in the present state of 
affairs in Ireland, that state should be so altered as that the Irish 
nation might obtain all the advantages which a truly representa- 
tive government bestows. 

It is clear that the difficulty consists in the paramount im- 
portance of the union — of the empii-e ; and this is not the place 
to discuss so large a question. It may be said, however, that the 
union of the British Empire does not and cannot consist in the 
absorption into one whole of the three integral parts which com- 
pose it. England, Scotland, and Ireland, are still three distinct 
national entities, each inhabited by a peculiar race, and each 
race cannot, in such a political organization, be in justice ignored, 
for a mere abstraction called the state. 

Certainly the question is a very complicated one; and to 
offer a dogmatic solution of it would be pretentious. It is bet- 
ter to leave it to a -future which is not far distant. What may 
be insisted on is, that moral force is strong enough to bring 
about a satisfactory decision, and that to resort to revolution for 
such a purpose would be as fatal as it is criminal. 

A right discussion of the question must make clear the fact 



MOEAL FORCE. 503, 

that Ireland is entitled to fair dealing as a component part of tlie 
empire. Many other political organizations embraced within 
the vast limits of the British power are allowed to discuss and 
decide on questions peculiar to themselves, and which they are 
at full liberty to pronounce upon for themselves by a wise adjust- 
ment and concession on the part of the mother-country as neces- 
sary to their well-being, Canada is almost entirely independent ; 
the Australian colonies have all their own legislatures ; it is the 
same more or less with all the distant dependencies of England, 
yet there have been no complaints heard so far of these late con- 
cessions threatening the union of the Empire. 

But the objection is urged : " If such a concession be made to 
Ireland, where can you stop ? The Scotch may ask the same, 
and the Welsh ; one has as much right to home-rule as the 
other ; where can you draw the line? " 

An easy answer to this isj that the Scotch have never asked 
for home-rule, for the very good reason that they never had to 
complain of unfair treatment at the hands of the English Govern- 
ment ; their special wants and desires having been always duly 
considered from the moment of their union with England. But 
the union of Ireland with England is not yet a century old, was 
brought about perforce, and by chicanery and fraud, and from 
the moment of its enactment to the present has been loudly pro- 
tested against by the Irish nation — the nation, that is, which we 
have followed all through, joined in this instance by numbers 
of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. A long list of pamphlets 
and books might be drawn np, as showing the fact that mul- 
titudes of Irish writers, not of a revolutionary but of a truly 
conservative character, who cannot be accused of disloyalty to 
England, have deplored, protested against, and clamored for the 
repeal of, the Union of 1800. 

Such is not the case with Scotland. But suppose it were, 
and proofs furnished showing that Scotland is not fairly repre- 
sented in a Parliament which meets at "Westminster, then that 
country would have just as much right to see itself fiiirly repre- 
sented, its special wants satisfied and met, as all the other branch- 
es of the great British organization. 

Certain it is that the empire cannot be sound when an im- 
portant, a vital part of its political frame is incurably sore. Let 
that sore be healed by justice, large, generous, and complete ; let 
Ireland be truly and really represented, in whatever manner her 
representation may be carried out, and the sudden rise of the 
little western isle in wealth, contentment, true prosperity, and 
happiness, will redound to the general good of the whole. As it 
now stands, its stilj miserable condition is as great and constant 
a danger to Great Britain as it is a reproach and a shame upon 
the maternal government which suffers the child, for whose pos- 



504: MOEAL FOECE. 

session it would stake its all, to continue in a state of almost 
hopeless poverty, materially and intellectually, and to struggle 
unaided in its efforts to rise. 

If home-rule be the measure which is to heal Ireland's 
wounds, it must be granted, and the voice of reason and right 
must rise above the stupid clamor which says that it cannot, 
must not, shall not be granted ! Such expressions were common 
in inflammatory pamphlets which flooded the country on the eve 
of Catholic Emancipation, in 1829 ; and possibly many were 
issued even after the granting of this (from a certain English 
point of view) suicidal act of justice to Catholics. 

But whatever may be the ultimate issue of the home-rale 
movement, the question of education, which is so closely allied 
to, as to seem dependent on it, is of such importance that it 
brooks no delay. Ireland is, as it may be hoped it will ever 
continue, a truly Catholic nation, and for such education must be 
special, and cannot be left to the direction of a non-Catholic 
state, not to use a worse expression. The result of the so-called 
national system, as exhibited by the Queen's Colleges and the 
rest, ought to be enough to open the eyes of real statesmen. 
But non-Catholic legislators need a sense which they do not 
possess, to appreciate the blunders they must fall into when pro- 
posing to touch such delicate interests as spiritual things. Thirty 
years ago, when those Queen's Colleges and schools were estab- 
lished in Ireland, the Catholic hierarchy raised up their voice to 
warn the British Government against so rash an attempt ; for 
the very few who appeared willing to give the system a trial had 
their own doubts and forebodings. The warning, as usual, was 
not heeded, and the consequence is, that the partisans of the 
system now confess that their darling scheme has turned out a 
complete failure. Tet, strange to say, they do not in the least 
seem to have changed their ideas on the subject. On the con- 
trary, they wish to secularize education more completely than 
ever, and to extend their project to the whole British Empire ; 
though at this moment the warning comes to them also from the 
Presbyterians of Scotland, who refuse to submit to the scheme, 
universal in its scope, of educating the young according to state 
notions and worldly ideas. . 

In this the British Government only follows the lead of all 
European cabinets and legislatures ; for this great iniquity is not 
confined to the British Isles, but is attempted everywhere, with 
the evident design of taking the government of souls out of the 
hands to which Jesus Christ confided it — the Church. The 
Sovereign Pontiff was compelled to protest, and, as is the custom 
in these days, his protest fell unheeded. It remains to be seen 
whether men, who call themselves Christians, will consent to see 
their children educated by secular bodies, which are not only void 



MORAL FORCE. 505 

of all authority over the souls of men, but imbued, as all know, 
with doctrines the most pernicious and disorganizing. The 
just complaint made bj the Irish hierarchy is unfortunately not 
restricted to their own body ; their complaint is one with that of 
all the rulers of the Church throughout the world. It seems to 
us that there is greater hope of establishing a thorough Christian 
system of education in Ireland than in any other country, be- 
cause the Irish nation will always take a more determined atti- 
tude, and gather in a more compact and united body around her 
natural leaders, the bishops and priests of God, than any other 
modern Catholic nation ; and, in this age, where there are una- 
nimity and a fixed purpose among any body of men, they can- 
not fail to result in a victory over all obstacles and opponents. 

Of one thing England may be sure, that the Irish bishops 
would never submit to the project now on foot in England, as to 
do so would be to fail in their most sacred duty ; and the mass 
of the Irish people is at their back. The Catholic hierarchy is 
always ready to support the secular power so long as that power 
remains within its province and does not step out of it to encroach 
on their unquestionable domain ; but, when duty calls on them to 
resist, the experience of centuries is before the world, in Ireland 
at least, to show how far they can carry their resistance. In this 
they will stand united as one man, and it is vain for the English 
Government to flatter itself that it will find tools among them, 
should it foist on them the Birmingham scheme. 

But a more threatening fact still is the compact union of all 
Irishmen in support of their bishops, against schemes which have 
already excited such bitter opposition on their part, and on which 
they have already pronounced and given their solemn verdict in 
unmistakable tones. If in our days Irishmen have been so eager 
to uphold many projects of a doubtful character, because those 
projects were opposed to England ; if they have shown in the 
most emphatic manner that the memory of the past is still fresh, 
and that they are not yet prepared to accept the British Govern- 
ment as a friend ; if they have seized every occasion, the most 
trifling as well as the most important, to show that the union 
with England was distasteful to them — ^what will be their atti- 
tude when the question admits of no doubt, and can give rise to 
no apprehension in a Christian conscience ; when, indeed, they 
know that they stand where their duty to God bids them, urged 
at the same time by their natural feelings of opposition to a 
power which they detest and to which they are irreconcilable ? 
We do not say that we altogether approve of their dogged oppo- 
sition to England ; it is only alluded to as a fact which it would 
be folly, in treating of questions between England and Ireland, 
to shut one's eyes to or doubt. 

When such is the state of feeling, how can a scheme of god- 



506 MORAL FOEOE. 

less education hope to succeed, wliicli, after all, requires the con- 
sent of fathers and mothers of families ? It is only natural to 
suppose that the English Government, in the event of its success, 
is scarcely prepared to employ such a numerous, watchful, and 
determined police as shall march the children off to school every 
day by force — to schools which to them would be prisons, pre- 
sided over by jailers in the shape of instructors. IS'evertheless, 
the scheme now agitated by British statesmen must culminate in 
some such measure, if they would have their schools attended ; 
and the inference is natural that education viewed from such a 
stand-point becomes a design criminal and oppressive in its na- 
ture, as well as a sheer impossibility in its carrying out. Once 
again the whole British power would launch itself in vain against 
the unyielding rock of as stubborn a will as ever animated hu- 
man beings, as durable and unshrinking almost as the inner rock 
upon which it is built — Catholic faith. 

Much space has already been devoted to the consideration of 
what are here considered as the two great measures necessary 
and sufficient for the complete resurrection of the Irish race — 
the lifting of the load of pauperism under which they have so 
long labored, and the establishment among them of a sound and 
thorough Christian education ; and that those measures will un- 
doubtedly be carried without any attempt at social convulsions, 
without any violation of law and order. But, as, unfortunately, 
many side-issues have been raised in Ireland of very inferior im- 
portance, but of a nature almost exclusively to engage the atten- 
tion of Irishmen, to the great detriment of real progress, it may 
be well to dwell a little longer on the consequences which must 
infallibly follow from a higher state of physical comfort and men- 
tal culture among them : 

I. A higher state of physical comfort will naturally produce 
a stronger attachment to their native soil and a corresponding 
reluctance to leave it, as they now do by wholesale emigration. 
The thought has been dwelt upon that emigration was a design 
of Divine Providence, and even the first step in the resurrection 
of the nation and in the establishment of its power within as well 
as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fully at- 
tained may be inferred from the fact that it still continues on so 
large a scale ; that it must ultimately dwindle to much smaller 
proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain. This is our 
wish and hope ; for the home population of the island must be 
large enough to invest it with deserved importance in the eyes 
of foreigners. Our title-page sets forth the words of Dr. New- 
man, expressive of the firm belief that the time will come when 
the Catholic population of Erin will be as thick and prosperous as 
that of Belgium ? Why should it not be so ? Pauperism alone 
prevents it. Let their existence be one of comfort — mere comfort. 



MORAL FOEO^. 507 

not luxury — and tliere is no limit to the increase of tlieir num- 
bers. In such an event Protestantism would contract into such 
narrow limits that in Ireland it would become a thing unknown ; 
the few sectarians still abiding there would themselves share in 
the general prosperity, and would possibly of their own accord 
return to the bosom of the common mother of Christians. 

The question, then, of increase of physical comfort for Irish- 
men is one of the utmost importance, and, as the tenure of land 
is so closely connected with it, not to this question is the term 
side-issue applied. The land-question should be thoroughly 
exhausted until the true solution, the real measure, which has 
not yet appeared, may be brought to the surface and carried out 
to the full. The land-question in all its bearings lies beyond 
our competence ; not so, certain reasons for believing that the 
possession of land is necessary for the complete restoration of 
the nation. Manufactures and commercial pursuits are of sec- 
ondary importance in a country like Ireland, which is eminently 
agricultural. This should not be taken to mean that such 
matters are to be neglected, and the Irish to be discouraged in 
engaging in them, particularly in their home manufactures ; nor 
in calling for better laws to help them, at least for fair dealing 
as far as legislation goes. But supposing them completely inde- 
pendent and masters of themselves ; supposing not only the 
repeal of the Union, but even the separation from the British 
organization effected, how could they hope to compete in manu- 
facturing skill, and science, with the inventive genius of the 
American, the systematic comprehensiveness of the Englishman, 
or the artistic taste of the French ? Goods are manufactured 
for the markets' of the world, and the Irish are not yet prepared 
for such extensive enterprises ; and, taking the characteristics of 
the race into consideration, it is doubtful whether they will ever 
be successful in such ventures. 

The same may be said of commerce. When are they likely 
to have a navy of their own ? They are still Celts, and would 
it be well for them to cease to be Celts ? The oceans of the 
globe are covered with ships bearing the flags of many nations. 
Suppose them to unfurl a national flag to the breeze, which is 
saluted, wherever met, by the crafts of other civilized nations, 
when would it become perceptible among the crowded fleets 
which already hold possession of the seas ? The broad thorough- 
fares of the ocean know two or three national colors ; all the 
others are so seldom seen, that their presence or absence is alike 
unnoticed by the world at large. Among these would the Irish 
be numbered, if they engaged in commerce on their own account, 
and sailed no longer under British colors. 

It is for them, then, to turn their attention to the land, which 
is their chief source of wealth. Let them buy it up, or gain it 



508 l^ORAL FORCE. 

by long leases, incli by incb and acre by acre, until not only tbe 
bleak bogs and wild mountains of Connaught are again tbeir 
own, but tlie ricb meadow-lands and smiling wheat-fields of 
Munster and Leinster. Let their brethren in America and 
Australia associate with them in this, and thus will they build 
up again a true Irish yeomanry and nobility — ^for nobility has a 
new meaning to-day — more glorious, perhaps, than the old one. 
Poverty and rags will give place to prosperity and comfort, even 
in the lowliest cottages, and mirth and glee will be heard again 
in the country from which they have so long been banished. 

Is such a picture a dream, and its realization an impossi- 
bility ? It is oar belief that, to make it a reality, only requires 
steadiness of purpose, perseverance, energy, and association. 
Fifty years ago it would certainly have seemed a dream ; but 
matters have advanced within the last half-century, and every 
thing is now prepared for such a hoped-for consummation. 

II. Together with physical comfort, the culture produced 
by a sound and thorough education is the second thing absolutely 
necessary for the resurrection of the nation. Education has, 
at all times, been of the utmost importance ; in our age it is 
more so than ever. It may be said that, in the opinion of man- 
kind, it tends more and more to replace blood. The privileges 
that once belonged to rank and birth are now everywhere freely 
accorded to a truly-educated man. And here, wealth, which 
is almost worshipped by many, cannot altogether take the place 
of education. Consequently, a great effort should be made in 
Ireland to raise the standard of the intellectual scale of society. 
Owing to former tyranny and oppression, the rising must begin 
at the lowest grade. But the first impulse has already been given 
by the Church of God, and that impulse must continue and 
increase with a constantly-accelerated force. 

Unfortunately, a false direction has been given ifc by the state. 
The means which will surely defeat this action of the state have 
been seen. I^Tevertheless, it works mischievously for the general 
result ; and the money paid by the nation has been and still is 
squandered for a most unholy purpose, when, if properly applied, 
it would be so fruitful of good. 

Should the government persevere in its project, one course 
only lies open before all true Irishmen ; and that is, to ignore 
the action of the government, and follow a plan of their own. 
They have only to do what the Catholics in France would most 
willingly do if the state allowed them ; what Catholics in the 
United States have been doing for some time, and will have to 
do for some time longer — not murmur too loudly at the taxes 
paid by them for educational purposes and used so lavishly by 
the state without any pi'ofit to. them ; but with steady purpose 
raise funds which the state cannot touch, devoted to an object 



MOEAL FOEOE. 509 

with wliicli tlie state cannot interfere, namely, the solid Christian 
education of their children nnder the eyes and chief control of 
the Church, with competent and truly religious masters. 

Let them reflect that until recently education in Christian 
countries was always imparted by the Church of Christ, and 
that its secularization is but a work of yesterday ; that the eifect 
of that secularization is manifest enough in the mental anarchy 
which grows more prevalent in Europe every day ; that the na- 
tion which comes back to the old system, and places again the 
care of youth in the hands of religious teachers, is sure to obtain 
a far sounder and more effective education than those who take 
for teachers of their children men void of faith and remarkable 
only for a false and superficial polish, which sooner or later will 
be reckoned by all at its true value, and meet only with well- 
merited neglect and contempt. 

No one will deny that moral* training, the first and most im- 
portant part of education, is far surer and safer in the care of 
religious teachers than in that of mere laymen, whose morality 
is often doubtful, and whose reputation is not of the best. With 
regard to scientific teaching, the mind of the religious is not, to 
say the least, lowered by the holy obligations which he has con- 
tracted : and it is an awkward fact for those who in a breath up- 
hold secular education and abuse the religious, that in former 
ages the men who excelled in arts and sciences, the geniuses 
whose works will live as long as the earth, were either them- 
selves monks or the pupils of monks. A list of them would fill 
many pages, and their names are not unknown to the world. 

For the mass of the people, the common level of primary 
education with which so many are now satisfied may at least be 
as satisfactory in its results when imparted by religious, male 
and female, as when under the direction of young men and 
women who have received every possible diploma which is at 
the disposal of school commissioners or boards of gentlemen 
invested with an office, worthy of the gravest attention, but to 
which they can devote but very little time. 

But the subject may be said to have passed beyond discussion. 
The true and authorized leaders of the Irish in such matters, the 
Catholic bishops, have already taken the matter into their own 
hands ; and in a very short time have, covered the island with 
their schools, with every prospect of a university. It rests with the 
government to give or refuse its aid in imparting a true national 
education to a nation which is Catholic ; but, with or without 
this aid, the Irish will have the means of educating their chil- 
dren rightly ; and the culture they receive will favorably com- 
pare with that imparted by rival establishments fostered by the 
state, whose pupils will not know a word even of their own na- 
tional history, since, in the authorized books, Ireland has no exist- 



510 MORAL FORCE. 

ence other tlian that of an unworthy subject of the great British 
Empire. 

It was necessary to give prominence to what is here consid- 
ered as the most effective means of bringing about the great 
result which engages our attention in this chapter. There are 
secondary objects which might be treated, but which, in the final 
working of the divine will, may be insignificant. For, to repeat 
what has been said before, the restoration of the nation which 
is now progressing so steadily almost unaided by any action of 
man, however much he may indulge in agitation, is the work of 
God, and before long will so manifest itself to alL Meanwhile 
it is enough to assert in general terms that Ireland is entitled to 
all those things which render a people happy and contented. 
That wished-for state is not far oft'; let them continue to be ac- 
tive in its pursuit. A previous chapter has already touched upon 
the great means to be employed in bringing this about : associa- 
tion, whose centre should be Ireland, and whose branches should 
spread wherever Irishmen have established themselves ; whose 
guides should be the clergy, but its chief workers, intelligent 
and energetic laymen. On this point it is desirable particularly 
to be rightly understood ; it is not our purpose to say that in 
such a work laymen ought not to cooperate, or even to lead; 
with the memory of O'Connell before us, such a thing would be 
impossible ; on the contrary, the external working of the whole 
scheme should be placed in the hands of good, active, and intel- 
ligent laymen. They are the proper instruments for carrying 
on such a work actively and eflacaciously ; they form, at least nu- 
merically, the principal part of the moral power of the nation, 
and that power should be developed on a larger scale than it has 
ever yet been. But the first impulse should be givto by the 
moral leaders, rulers of the Church. Let the nation work under 
the guidance, the leadership of the men who alone stood by 
them when all else had been^ lost, who, in fact, by preserving 
their religion, preserved to them their nationality ; let them work 
under their eyes and with their sanction, and assuredly their 
labor will not be labor in vain. 

What will the final result be of such a cooperation of work- 
ers? The formation or rather consolidation of a truly Chris- 
tian and Catholic people ; a most remarkable phenomenon in 
this wonderful nineteenth century! It would seem that they 
have thus far been deprived of a government of their own only 
to win a government at last which shall be, what is so sadly 
wanted in these days. Christian and Catholic. Modern govern- 
ments have broken loose from Christianity ; they have declared 
themselves independent of all moral restraint ; they have pro- 
nounced themselves supreme, each in its own way ; and, to be 
consistent, they have become godless. Donoso Cortes has shown 



MORAL FORCE. 511 

this admirably in his work on " Catholicism, Liberalism, and 
Socialism." The sad spectacle which in om- age meets the eye 
of the Christian, is universal ; there is no longer a Catholic na- 
tion ; Christendom has ceased to exist. This is held by the 
statesmen of to-day to be a vast improvement on the old social 
system. Mediaeval barbarism, as they term it, has, according to 
them, met with just condemnation ; and to return to it now, 
would be to drag an advanced age centuries backward, a horror 
which no sane man could contemplate. 

Undoubtedly there were many abuses under the old regime^ 
which the most sincere Christian regrets, and could not wish to 
see restored, or again attempted. But, its great feature, the 
inner link which bound the system together, its unity under the 
guidance of the universal Church, was the only safeguard for the 
general happiness of mankind. This admirable unity has been 
broken into fragments ; each part does for itself, and thus the 
world lies at the mercy of Might, and each nation goes about 
like " a strong man armed, keeping his house." 

Even Heeren, a writer who is strongly Protestant and liberal, 
is driven to confess in his " History ot the Political System of 
Europe," that the reign of Frederick the Great, in Prussia, was 
" immediately followed by those great convulsions in states, 
which gave the ensuing period a character so different from the 
former. The contemporary world, which lived in it, calls it the 
revolutionary ; but it is yet too early to decide by what name it 
will be denoted by posterity, after the lapse of a century." 

After a brief review of the various states as they existed 
toward the middle of the last century, he adds : " The efforts of 
the rulers to obtain unlimited power had overthrown the old 
national freedom in all the states of the Continent ; the assem- 
blies of the states had disappeared, or were reduced to mere 
forms ; nowhere had they been modelled into a true national 
representation." 

He does not see that, in orcfer to obtain that " unlimited 
power," the rulers had thrown off the yoke of Church authority 
everywhere, and that Christendom disappeared with the " old 
national freedom" as soon as the key-stone of the edifice, the 
papacy, was ejected from its place. 

JSTevertheless, he was keen enough to perceive it necessary to 
call in armed force to uphold that usurped power of rulers : 

"For the strength of the states no other criterion was known 
than standing armies. And, in reality, there was scarcely any 
other. By the perfection which they had attained, and which, 
kept pace almost with the growing power of the princes, the line' 
of partition was gradually drawn between them and the nations; 
they only were armed ; the nations were defenceless." 

This great German historian carries his views further still, 



512 MOEAL rOEOE. 

and confesses that, " if the political supports were in a tottering 
condition, the moral were no less shattered. The corner-stone 
of every political system, the sanctity of legitimate possession, 
without which there would be only one war of all against all, 
was gone ; politicians had already thrown oif the mask in Poland ; 
the lust of aggrandizement had prevailed. . . . The indissoluble 
bond connecting morals and politics being broken, the result was 
to make egotism the prevailing principle of public as well as 
private life." 

Admirable reflections, doubtless, but incomplete ; the Prot- 
estantism of the writer not allowing him to perceive that, the 
only sure defender of morality having been discarded, egotism 
could not but prevail. Therefore does he complain, being blind 
to the true cause of the disorder, that " democratic ideas, trans- 
ported from America to Europe, were spread and cherished in 
the midst of the monarchical system — ^ready materials for a' 
conflagration far more formidable than their authors had antici- 
pated, should a burning spark unhappily light upon them. 
Others had already taken care to profane the religion of the 
people ; and what remains sacred to the people when religion 
and constitution are profaned?" 

This last observation, thrown in at the end of some very 
sound considerations, would have made them far more striking, 
had it appeared at their head as the great source of all the catas- 
trophes which ensued. But it requires a Catholic eye to take in 
the whole truth, and a Catholic tongue to give the right explana- 
tion of history, as of all things else. 

Many reflections similar to those above quoted have been 
made by non-Catholic writers, and the defenders of the Church 
have spoken with clearness and energy throughout. ITeverthe- 
less, the evil has continued to grow more universal and more 
alarming, until, to-day, no principle on which the social fabric 
can securely stand is acknowledged by those who rule the exterior 
world. And of what ITeeren calls the violation of " the sanctity 
of legitimate possession," let Poland and many other states 
speak, nay, those of the Father of the faithful himself, to whose 
warning voice rulers have now so long persistently turned a 
deaf ear. Where are now even the fragments of that " corner- 
stone" of the old "political system?" 

Such is the state of afiairs, not only in Europe, but generally 
throughout the world, so that the Catholic Church has at length 
entered fully upon that stage of her existence when she possesses 
individual subjects full of tender affection and devotedness, 
whose number, thank God ! increases every day, but not a single 
State which acknowledges her as its director and teacher. 

Ireland may be destined to become the first one which shall 
acknowledge her, and set an example to the rest. If ever she 



MOEAL rOEOE. 513 

enjoys self-government, slie will surely do so, for Catholic she is 
to the core, and Catholic she cannot but remain. 

"When it was said that home-rule would not serve as a sure 
panacea for all her evils, it will be understood as applying to the 
actual moment and nothing else. That it would not be a good 
thing for her ever to enjoy real self-government was never in 
our mind; Moral force is bringing this nearer to her ; and step 
by step she is learning how to walk without support. Already, 
she possesses something of political franchise, and enjoys muni- 
cipal government more truly than Frenchmen do after all their 
social convulsions. 

There are men. Irishmen even, who pretend that she would 
subside into anarchy if her destiny were confided to • her own 
care. They point to the constant wranglings which have been 
her bane for centuries, and the "prophet" who wrote the 
"Battle of Dorking" represents her, as soon as the humiliation 
of England left her free, struggling painfully in the throes of 
anarchy. That this general opinion of men with regard to Ire- 
land is but too true, was conceded in another place, yet only 
so far as concerned interests which were trifling, or, at best, of no 
high character ; that when the object at stake is one of great 
importance, there was more steadiness, unanimity, energy, and 
true heroism in the Irish people, than in any other known to 
history in modern times. And this reflection is certainly borne 
out by the issues of all the secular struggles of the Irish with 
Scandinavianism, feudalism, and Protestantism. 

Surely is there in them the right material for a nation ; and, 
when the day comes for the country to take in hand, under 
Providence, her own destiny and work it out, the " prophet " 
will find himself sadly mistaken when, freed forever from the 
degradation of pauperism, she is at liberty to raise her thoughts 
above food and raiment ; when her children, lifted by a solid 
Christian education to the high level of intellectual foresight, 
shall be able to discuss the great objects of their national in- 
terests, with no question of clan and clan ; then wrangling will 
cease, as far as public questions are concerned, and be merely 
left to matters of minor importance, or private affairs, as with 
all other nations. But that concentrated energy which has 
marked the race throughout that long fight of centuries against 
such overwhelming odds, will still continue as their distin- 
guishing characteristic, but turned now to the question of their 
own national welfare, and no longer to the aversion of doom. 

Then will Europe see what a truly Christian people is, for 
then there will be no other left ; and the superiority of principles, 
of strength of mind, energy of character, naturally fostered by 
deep religious convictions, will afford another proof of Montes- 
quieu's reflection, that " the Christian faith, which seems to have 
33 



514 MOEAL FOEOE. 

for its object only the future life, is likewise the best calculated 
to make people happy and prosperous during this." 

If ever men are brought to acknowledge the fatal error they 
made in rejecting the sacred safeguard which Christ left them 
in his Church, it will be by looking on the example of a nation 
actually existing, governed by the great principles which alone 
can insure the happiness of the individual and the prosperity of 
the whole people. 

In all the foregoing considerations Ireland has been looked 
upon as a nation full of vigor and energy ; but, as this vital point 
is denied by some, who bear the reputation of thoughtful 
writers, it is well to establish it clearly before our minds. 

Is Ireland a nation ? Some say, IS o ; others, among them Mr. 
Froude, say she is divided into two nations. 

The first of these assertions, that she is not a nation, is in 
appearance so self-evident and true that it seems folly to deny it. 
She has no government of her own ; her destinies seem to be 
altogether in the hands of a hostile race, which rules her by a 
Parliament, where her voice is scarcely heard. She has no army 
nor navy, no commerce, no treasury, not the lowest prerogative 
of sovereignty. There is a green flag still somewhere with a 
harp on it and a crown above the harp, reserved for state occa- 
sions, and unfurled now and again, when a show of loyalty and 
a little enthusiasm is called for ; but that flag never waves the 
Irish to battle, not even when fighting for England. There is 
no Irish standard-bearer for it, as there was under the Tudors, 
when the flag of Ulster was seen amid the armies of Elizabeth. 
The name of Ireland is never mentioned in any treaty with 
foreign powers ; and, when the sovereign of England, Scotland, 
and Ireland, signs a treaty, a convention, nay, a poor protocol, 
with any foreign state, the name of Ireland is not to be seen on 
the parchment, save at its head, among the titles of the monarch. 
There is no Irish seal even to afiix to the document : the country 
is a national non-entity. 

But other men, and wise men too, discover a strange anomaly 
in this curious country. They hold that it is composed of two 
distinct nations, and furnish excellent reasons in support of their 
theory. 

They talk in this fashion : " Look at the people ; travel the 
country north and south, and converse with them as you go. 
What do you find ? Unity of feeling, aims, agreement of opin- 
ion on all possible subjects ? Just the opposite ! You find Ja- 
cob and Esau on every side struggling in the womb of their 
mother. The quarrel between Sassenach and Gael still goes on. 
"What two figures can be found more antagonistic than the 
Orangeman of Ulster and the Milesian of Connaught ? Yet they 
are both children of the same country." 



MORAL FORCE. 515 

And so deep-grained is the difference between tliem that, al- 
tliongli tliey have lived side by side for centuries, they are still 
as hostile to each other as when they first met in battle array. 
The Danes, after a struggle of a little more than two ■ centuries, 
gave up the contest and became Celts. Strongbow's ISTormans 
soon adopted the manners of the old inhabitants, intermarried 
with them, and, after a lapse of four centuries, though quarrels 
often broke out between the one and the other, they were to all 
intents and purposes Celts, the old race, as it were, absorbing 
the ISTorman blood, and always showing itself in the children. 

But, when will the children of James's Scotchmen or Crom- 
well's Covenanters coalesce with the descendants of the Mile- 
sians ? The longer they dwell together, the farther they seem 
apart, the more they seem to hate each other ; and every 12th 
of July, 5th of November, 17th of March, or even 15th of Au- 
gust, brings danger of bloodshed and strife to every city, ham- 
let, and town. Surely, this fact speaks of two nations in the 
country. 

The question here presented is indeed a complicated one, 
requiring solid distinctions in order to elucidate it ; and, strange 
to say, this last difficulty of the presence of two nations in Ire- 
land offers greater obstacles to the firm establishment of our 
opinion than the first assertion, so clear and undeniable in ap- 
pearance, that there is no Irish nation ! 

If true nationality existed only in the externals of govern- 
ment, in an army, navy, commerce, a public seal and flag, and 
recognition by foreign powers, further discussion would clearly 
be useless, and the subject might as well at once be dropped. 

But the true idea of a nation embraces much more than this ; 
there is such a thing as a national soul, and all the array of acci- 
dents alluded to above constitute only the body, or, more truly, 
the surroundings. As a writer in the North American Remew 
(vol. cxv., p. 379) has well expressed it, a nation is " a race of 
men, small or great, whom community of traditions and feeling 
binds together into a firm, indestructible unity, and whose love 
of the same past directs their hopes and fears to the same fu- 
ture." 

In this sense nationality assuredly belongs to Ireland. More, 
perhaps, than among any other people on earth, is there for the 
great bulk of them " community of traditions and feeling," 
binding them together into " a firm and indestructible unity ; " 
and who shall say that they feel no love for their past, because 
that past has been clouded with sorrow ? ]^ay, this fact makes 
the past dearer, and tends all the more to direct their hopes and 
fears to the same future ; a future, indeed, still dim and uncer- 
tain, and not to be named with perfect certainty, but wrapped 
in mists like the morning ; yet the faint flush of the dawn is 



516 MOEAL rOECE. 

already there tliat shall pale and -die away when the fiill orb of 
the sun appears. 

The reader may remember what was said of the unanimity 
so striking in all Irishmen, wherever they may be fonnd ; that, 
though private disputes may be taken up among them with such 
ardor that their quarrels have become proverbial, when the 
question refers to their country or their God, in a moment they 
are united, suddenly transformed into steady friends, ready to 
shed their blood side by. side for the great objects which entirely 
absorb their natures. 

This feeling it is which forms the soul of a nation. Wher- 
ever this is to be found,, there is an indestructible nationality; 
wherever it is absent, there is only a dead body, however strong 
may seem its government, however vast its armies, however high 
its so-called culture and refinement. 

These reflections being kept in view, judicious men will 
agree that, among Europeans at least, there is scarcely any other 
nationality so strong and vigorous as the Irish. Their tradi- 
tional feeling keeps their past ever present to their eyes ; their 
ardent nature hopes ever against hope ; misfortunes which would 
utterly break down and dishearten any other people, leave them 
still full of bright anticipations, and, as they seem to weep over 
the cold body of a dear mother — Erin, their country — they think 
only of her resurrection. 

But are there not two nations among them — two nations 
radically opposed to each other and incapable of coalescing ? 
Supposing a resurrection of the people, which of the two is to 
prevail — ^the numerical majority, or the so far influential mi- 
nority ? In either event, it is fair to suppose a new state of 
helotism for the one party or the other. Is this the spectacle 
which the regenerated nation is likely to present ? 

In speaking of the resurrection of Ireland, the old, massive, 
compact body of the people, the venerable race, Celtic in its 
aspirations and tendencies, if not altogether in its origin, has 
always been kept in view ; and that anomalous, foreign excres- 
cence which has so steadily refused to assimilate with the mass, 
and has until our days remained " encamped " in Ireland, as the 
Turks are justly said to have remained " encamped " in Europe, 
has never entered into our reckoning. 

The true Irishman has ever been catholic — the word is used 
in its grammatical and not in its religious sense — in fellowship. 
The race, as now constituted, is assuredly of mixed origin, and 
large drafts of foreign population have been added from time to 
time to the primitive stock, which has always been kind to admit, 
absorb, and make them finally Celtic. Strongbow's N'ormans 
were not the last who submitted to that process ; as was seen, 
many Cromwellians becames the fathers, or grandfathers at least, 



MORAL FORCE. 517 

of as sturdy an Irisli branch, as ever flonrislied in the strong air 
of the country. 

But a comparatively small body of men bas doggedly refused 
to submit to this process, and continued to this day an English 
or Lowland Scotch colony on the Irish soil. The future of Ire- 
land does not take them in, for the very simple reason that they 
are not of her, they do not belong to her, they are as much for- 
eie:ners to-day as they ever were. Therefore do we admit the 
existence of two nations, if people are pleased to call them so, in 
Ireland, but of one nation only have we written. The only ques- 
tion in regard to this second "nation" is : "What will become of 
them in the future ? Are they, in their turn, to become helots, 
after having vainly striven so long to make helots of the others ? 
God forbid ! ISTo true Irishman nourishes in his soul such feel- 
ings of retaliation or revenge. 

Assuredly, they will be prevented from disturbing any longer 
the public order, and forced at length to respect the majority, or 
rather, the mass of their countrymen, l^o one can object to 
having such a necessary measure imposed upon them. In the 
many civil discords which, for more than a century and a half, 
have disgraced the north of Ireland, they have almost invariably 
been the aggressors. The government openly taking their part 
for a long time, they had the whole field to themselves, and what 
use they made of their privilege, and how they improved their 
opportunity, is known to all. When, at last, the public author- 
ities could no longer pretend to ignore their hateful spirit, and 
began to show some signs of protecting the hitherto much-abused 
majority, by forbidding those odious processions to which the 
others always attached such importance, they gave themselves 
the airs of a persecuted body of men, and pretended that hence- 
forth their lives, and those of their wives and children, were no 
longer safe. 

The province of Ulster being closed to them as a field of 
operations, they transferred to Upper Canada the exhibition of 
their blood-thirsty hatred, and on several occasions the Catholic 
population of the country had to protect their churches, mus- 
ket in hand. Even in the United States they have rendered 
themselves odious to the people by foisting their spirit of strife 
on a land where they cannot but be strangers, and by staining 
some of the streets of 'New York with blood, in order to gratify 
their senseless animosity. 

It is surely time that an end be put to such absurd and dan- 
gerous antics', not abroad only, but at home. In the new order 
of things now dawning upon Ireland, there can no longer be 
room for them ; and the very name of Orangeman must disap- 
pear forever from the vocabulary of the new nation, to the joy 
of all peaceful and law-abiding citizens. 



518 MOEAL FOECE. 

That is all the ]3ersecution thay need expect. ISTot only will 
there be room for them still in the country of their birth, but of 
course they will have their due share in all the privileges of citi- 
zenship. Political distinctions between themselves and the old 
race will be unknown ; social distinctions will be a question for 
themselves to settle. Should they show the slightest desire of 
combining Avith the majority of their countrymen, these latter 
will be generous enough to forget the past, and perhaps the 
others may imitate their predecessors, the Danes, the ]^ormans, 
and even some of their Cromwellian kin, and become, at last, 
Sibernis hiberniores. 

What is said of political and social distinctions will hold good 
also for religious tenets. Let them, if they choose, continue to 
stand by their Presbyterian dogmas, provided they do not quar- 
rel with the majority for 'professing what they love to believe ; 
but that belief must come to an external and public profession. 
They will often hear the bells of Catholic churches ; as they pass 
outside, if they do not enter, the strains of the glorious music 
and noble anthems, resounding within, will fall on their ears ; 
they will see the statue of the Blessed Yirgin borne through the 
streets on the 15th of August, amid showers of snowy blossoms, 
falling from the innocent hands of children ; all this they must 
endure, if it be so hard to endure it; but this is not persecution. 
Even to their eyes, if their heart be not frozen by a cold belief, 
the sight will bear some attractions. And if they come to think, 
that what is oldest in Christianity is the best, and that, after all, 
Catholicity has something in it which makes life sweet and pleas- 
ant, it can scarcely be held a crime in the universal Church to 
open her arms and receive back to her bosom those wandering 
and so long obstinate children. 

"When will all this come to pass ? "Who can tell ? But stranger 
things than these have already taken place in Ireland, and we 
are confident that future historians of the race will have to record 
greater wonders still, and facts more stubborn and difficult of 
explanation. 

At all events, should the inflexible Puritanism of the Scotch 
colony stand proof against the allurements of a motherly and 
tender-hearted Church, they must at least become subject to the 
iron laws of population and absorption. "When the public 
statutes are no longer drawn up for their special benefit, when 
no new swarms of brethren come to swell their ranks, when they 
are abandoned to the merciless laws of loss and gain in numbers, 
then will people soon see on which side is true morality, and by 
which the ordinances of God are really respected ; then will 
many vapid accusations against the holy Catholic Church of 
themselves disappear, and the eyes of men will open to the great 
fact that Ireland must be and remain one in race, feeling, and, 



MOEAL rORCE. 519 

above all, in religion. The foreign element will have dwindled to 
insignificance, if it shall not have utterly disappeared. Indeed, it 
may be safely predicted that the day will arrive when the an- 
nouncement of the natural demise of the last Puritan in Ireland 
will appear in the daily newspapers as a curious piece of intelli- 
gence, not devoid of a certain interest. 

Though moral force, as the agent of the regeneration of Ire- 
land, has been our theme all through, we would not have our 
readers infer that Irishmen should adopt the do-nothing policy, 
and leave to God alone the work of raising them up. The moral 
force spoken of is that of hijman beings endowed with activity 
and determination, steady and persevering in the pursuit of well- 
organized plans of their own conception. 

Let Irishmen lift up their eyes and behold what they might 
do, did they only appreciate their strength and husband it. Dire 
calamities, which God designed from the first to convert into 
blessings, have scattered them over the world, and brought out 
that power of expansion which was always in their nature, but 
lay dormant and cramped under the pressure of terrible circum- 
stances. They again show themselves as that old race which 
three thousand years ago spread itself all over Europe and Asia. 
They now bear in their hands an emblem which they had not 
then — the cross of Christ ! And the cross is the sign of univer- 
sality in time and space. To that sign, since the triumph of the 
Saviour on the day of his resurrection, is given the rule of the 
world till the end of time. ]S"ow that our globe is known at last, 
the cross must be planted all over its surface, and in this great 
work the Irish race is clearly destined to bear a conspicuous 
part. 

In the fulfilment of that divine vocation they are dispersed, 
and whatever is dispersed is deprived of a great part of its 
strength. How can the disjecta membra, scattered far and wide 
by Typhon, become again Osiris ? Under the guidance of God, 
by that great instrument of modern times, the power of associa- 
tion and organization, aided by a stead}'-, energetic will. 

Ezekiel has admirably described the process in his thirty- 
seventh chapter. The Lord must first speak : " Ye dry bones, 
hear the word of the Lord. . . . Behold, I will send spirit into 
you, and ye shall live ; and I will lay sinews on jou, and will 
cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin ; and 
I will give you spirit, and ye shall live." . 

All this seems to be the work of God alone, yet, in the very 
words of the prophet, the dry bones have their part to perform : 

" As I prophesied, there was a noise, a commotion, and the 
bones came together, each one to his joint." 

There is the whole process ; it supposes a noise, a commo- 
tion, a rising, an assembling together, and a fitting each one into 



520 MOEAL FORCE. 

his own joint. They possess an activity of their own, which they 
must nse. And the phenomenon is to take place in the midst 
of " a vast plain " — two great continents — over the surface of 
which the " bones " are found on every side, appearing " ex- 
ceeding dry." 

"With what a power will that army be invested when it rises 
up and stands upon its feet ! We may form some faint idea of 
it, when in our large cities any thing occurs to excite the interest 
and warm up the feeling of that apparently inert Celtic mass. 
The largest halls constructed cannot contain the multitudes who 
have only read the announcement of a meeting, a lecture, or 
a charitable undertaking. Such scenes are witnessed every day 
along the banks of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the 
Delaware Rivers ; by the shores of Chesapeake Bay ; in all the 
great centres of population dotting the Atlantic coast ; in the 
heart of the continent along the winding course of the Missis- 
sippi and Missouri ; and already, even in the far West, on the 
spreading shores of the Pacific Ocean. The same is occurring 
all over the inhabited portion of Australia and the adjacent 
islands. What power, then, would be theirs did those " bones " 
know how to come together each in his own joint ! 

How is it that we hear of no concerted action among them 
for their country's sake ? Is each man so busy, and lost in his 
own little sphere of interest and speculation, that he cannot 
spare a moment's thought for the claims of his native country ? 
Who can say this ? Moreover, the best means of promoting 
their own private interests would be to raise before the eyes of 
all the status of the country with which they are naturally 
identified. The truth is, each one waits for another to set the 
example, the mass being ever ready to follow a lead and show its 
good-will. Association is needed. 

When they turn their eyes to the incessant struggle going 
on in the mother-country, when they read in their own news- 
papers the discussions of the Irish press, of the questions de- 
bated on the soil most dear to them, and the agitation of the 
momentous interests pending and awaiting a final decision 
among their former countrymen, no doubt their feelings are 
strongly moved ; the hopes and fears of their youth, before they 
left their native shores, are revived with renewed force, and their 
love for their green island is as ardent as ever. 

But is this all ? Is it enough that the heart of each one is 
stirred within him ? Is it not for them to see that the influence of 
their new name, new position, and bettered circumstances, be 
brought to bear, however far away they may be, upon the great 
home questions of land-tenure, education, the elective franchise, a 
native Parliament, commerce, manufactures, and all matters 
touching on the general welfare of Ireland ? If, having become 



MORAL FOEOE. 521 

adopted citizens of a new country, they can no longer act as 
citizens of Erin, they may and ought at least to interest them- 
selves in these matters as far as true loyalty to their adopted 
country may allow them ; and this they can best do by asso- 
ciation. 

The bonds of a wise organization would give firmness and 
compactness to the whole moral force of the dispersed nationality. 
By association, the scattered "dry bones" would be speedily 
changed into a solid array of living warriors standing upon their 
feet, and the startling spectacle would astonish the whole world, 
and win for the race the involuntary respect of all who should 
witness or hear of it. ITothing would be easier than to set such a 
thing on foot, for, although so far apart in appearance, the ma- 
jority of Irish families, from the very fact of emigration, have 
half of their members at home and half abroad, joined together 
by an active correspondence and a constant transmission of funds. 
The managers of the movement would only have to organize for 
a general object, what already is organized in fact, and direct to 
the common good what is now done privately. 

A word has already been said on the possible management 
of such an organization : that the movement should begin at 
home, in the island ; that its supervision should be left to the 
true leaders of the nation ; and that all the workings, details, 
and executive part, may be safely intrusted to the active mem- 
bers of the association. 

The class here designated as leaders of the nation is already 
known to the reader. The old nobility having been destroyed, 
there is no other body which truly represent the Irish j)eople to- 
day save the clergy. This is, no doubt, a misfortune, but none 
the less a fact. It ofiers the anomaly of clergymen meddling to 
a certain extent in politics ; but, in Ireland, this is unavoidable. 

How does the whole body of the European Catholic clergy 
understand its position in all those Catholic congresses and 
unions, which are now, thank God ! starting up in all Christian 
countries ? How do the laymen, on their side, appreciate the 
share they have to take in those various movements? How do 
they act under the lead of their spiritual advisers ? Are any 
odious distinctions ever known in those associations? Can any 
misunderstanding arise among men animated with a true love 
for religion ? And why should not the same be true of Ireland, 
among a people so full of love for country ? This is what is 
meant when the terms leaders and followers, clergy and laity, are 
here used. 

Another consideration will show still more forcibly the impor- 
tance of the great measure here proposed. One circumstance 
must have struck those who read the detailed reports of the 
Catholic congresses mentioned above — the sudden appearance 



5-22 MOEAL rOECE. 

of a large array of laymen, illustrious by their birth, wealth, 
political power, or literary attainments; but, for the most part, 
not so well known for their deep attachment to the cause of the 
Church. A new channel of activity was suddenly opened up to 
them ; they threw themselves into it, and became the bold cham- 
pions of a cause to which, undoubtedly, they had been individu- 
ally attached, but of which they now became the public onen. 
And there is little doubt that many young men, lukewarm be- 
fore, and perhaps with nothing more than the remembrance of 
the Christian education they had once received, suddenly revived 
in spirit and made a solemn profession of a cause which, perhaps, 
they would not have had the courage openly to advocate, did not 
the number and names of the first originators of the movement 
encourage them to join in it heart and soul. 

ISTow, it is said, perhaps too truly, that the warm religious 
feeling which has been all along claimed as the most strildng 
characteristic of the Irish race, is no longer shared alike by all 
classes of Irish Catholics; that, too often, when' individuals 
among them rise in the social scale, and reach a step in the social 
ladder from which they imagine that they can look down upon 
the despised mass below, they no longer feel that deep reverence 
for their religion which had characterized their youth, and, after 
all, are not very different from the mass of non-Catholics among 
whom they prefer to move.' This class of men has been well 
described by Moore in his own person, in various passages of his 
"Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion." 

The fact is, indeed, too true ; but what is the chief cause of 
it ? One of the most active means of bringing about such a 
result we take to be the complete isolation in which young men 
of the class referred to find themselves in their own sphere of 
life= There is, in fact, no motive for displaying their attachment 
to their religion, and no respectable means of doing so. They 
do not. feel their souls moved by sufficient proselytic ardor to 
induce them, of their own accord, to originate any thing of that 
kind, and the generality of them have, probably, not received 
from ligature the talents requisite to make them leaders in any 
cause whatever. ~^o one around them moves in that direction ; 
hence their apathy and consequent lukewarmness in the practice 
and outward profession of their faith. 

But change all the surroundings ; present them an influential 
body to which it is an honor to belong — a body marching openly 
under the banner of the true Church of Christ and of their coun- 
try, bound together as of old — and then will it be seen whether 
or not they indeed are the degenerate sons of martyred ancestors 
they now appear to be. 

It is indeed very remarkable that, of all countries, Ireland 
seems to make the least show in those Catholic unions and con- 



MOKAL FOEOE. 523 

gresses bow so widely spread tlirougliout Europe. The reason 
for this, perhaps, is, that there seemed less cause for their exist- 
ence in Ireland than elsewhere. But, as, in Ireland, their object 
would not only embrace the interests of religion, but likewise 
those of the country itself, it seems natural to think that there 
they are particularly wanted. 

Let the leaders of the nation, then, bestir themselves. Long 
ages of oppression unfortunately have rendered them somewhat 
timid and seemingly afraid of jeopardizing the important inter- 
ests confided to their care. Let them lift up their eyes and see 
that the time for timidity has passed away : the enemy is reckless 
and open in his attacks ; their resistance must be equally undis- 
guised and fearless. The people themselves understand this and 
occasionally display a boldness which shows that the old heroism 
still lives in them ; but they want leaders, and, if the right ones 
are not fast to take hold oi' them, they may fall into the hands 
of wrong-headed guides. Let the true guides look out and see 
how broad are .the lines which divide the good from the evil, and 
tliat victory is sure to 'the stout of heart, when backed by the 
serried masses of a united people. 

The principle of association and the machinery of organiza- 
tion must be applied to all subjects connected with the resurrec- 
tion of the country. What has been done so effectually for the 
cause of temperance must be done likewise for education, for the 
purchase or tenure of land, for the development of agriculture, 
manufactures, and commerce, for the true representation of the 
nation, for free municipal government, for the securing of a truly 
Irish yeomanry and gentry, for a thousand objects on which the 
future welfare of the nation depends. All classes of society, 
persons of every age and of either sex, yes, women and children, 
ought to be induced to take an interest in what concerns all alike. 
Every possible occasion should be taken advantage of to insure 
the attainment of the ultimate object. "When such a work is 
really entered upon in earnest, the results will be astonishing. 

This is the complete development of moral force, and, until 
all these means have had fair trial, no one can say that moral 
force has been fully tried and has failed. 

Such a system would, we firmly believe, result in the ultimate 
restoration of Ireland's rights and would surely culminate in her 
final resurrection at no distant date. That the Irish would enter 
with spirit into those various associations has been sufiiciently 
demonstrated by previous examples, particularly under O'Con- 
. nell ; and it is impossible to see how surer, greater, and speedier 
results could be obtained by any amount of physical force of 
which Ireland is capable. What array of physical force can the 
Irish muster to compete at all with their powerful rivals, situated 
as they are with the chains of centuries still binding them down, 



524 MOEAL FOECE. 

for, thoiigli tlie shackles may be actually removed, their effect is 
still there. The very statement of the terms, Ireland versus 
England, is enough to show the hopelessness of such a combat. 
It is a very easy thing to magnify the old heroism of the Irish, 
and cast opprobrium on the present bearers of the name, as did 
several newspaper writers recently, for not displaying the 
" j)luck " of their ancestors who fought against Elizabeth, Crom- 
well, and William of Orange. It is forgotten that circumstances 
have altered considerably since those days when the Irish pos- 
sessed a regular army led by experienced generals : restore those 
circumstances, and the Irish of to-day might outdo their ancestors ; 
at all events, there is no reason for supposing that they would be 
inferior. However, there is such a thing as impossibility, and 
any attempt of such a nature, with such surroundings, must be 
deemed by all sensible men not merely rashness, but folly. 

In concluding these pages, the author begs to be allowed a 
word as to their general character, in reply to a dogmatic and 
comprehensive criticism which it is easy to foresee will be passed 
on them. It will undoubtedly be asserted that an undue promi- 
nence has been given to the religious side of the Irish question, 
while its many political aspects have been left in the background. 
This charge will be laid at the door of the clerical and religious 
character of the writer, and may give rise to the notion that the 
view here taken of the subject is not the right one, but a radical 
failure. 

The answer to this objection is, in brief, that no one can treat 
seriously and properly of the Irish race without taking a religious 
view of it. Whoever adopts a different method of treating the 
matter would, in our opinion, go completely astray ; would take 
in only a few side-views ; would, in fact, pretend to have made a 
serious study of it, which he offered to the public as such, while 
ignoring the chief and almost only feature. 

The Irish is a religious race, and nothing else. It seems that 
such was its character thousands of years ago, even when pagan. 
At the time when Hanno was sent by the Carthaginian senate 
beyond the Pillars of Hercules to explore the western coast of 
Africa, toward the south — of which voyage the short narrative 
is still left us — Himilco, brother to Hanno, was similarly com- 
missioned to form settlements on the European coast, toward the 
north. The account of this latter expedition, which was extant 
in the time of Pliny the Elder, is unfortunately lost ; but, in 
the poem of K. Festus Avienus, entitled " Ora Ivtaritima," there . 
are copious extracts from it, in which, at least, the sense of the 
original is preserved. Avienus, after speaking of the " Insulse 
CEstrimnides," which Ileeren thinks must be the Scilly Islands, 
goes on to say : 



MOEAL rOECE. 525 

" Ast hinc duoLus in Sacram (sic insiilam 
Dixere prisci) solibus cursus rati est. 
HcEC inter nndas multam csespitem jacet, 
Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit." 

The passage runs almost into literal Englisli as follows : 

" Thence in two days, a good ship in sailing 
Beaches the Holy Isle ' — so was she called of old — 
That in the sea nestles, whose turf exuberant 
The race of Hibernians tills." 

In the time of Himilco, therefore, five hundred years before 
Christ, Ireland was called the Holy Isle, a title she had received 
long before: Sic insulam dixere ])Tisci. In what that holiness 
may have consisted precisely, it is impossible now to say ; all we 
know is, that foreign navigators, who were acquainted with the 
world as far as it was then known, whose ships had visited the 
harbors of all nations, could find no more apt expression to de- 
scribe the island than to say that, morally, it was " a holy spot," 
and physically " a fair green meadow," or, as her children to this 
day call her, " the green gem of the sea." 

But we have better means of judging in what the holiness of 
the people consisted after the establishment of Christianity in 
their midst ; and the description of it given in the fourth chapter 
of this book, taken from the most trustworthy documents, shows 
how well deserved was the title the island bore. 

From that day forth the religious type was clearly im.pressed 
on the nation, and has ever remained deeply engraven in its 
character. The race was never distinguished for its fondness 
for trade, for its manufactures, for depth of policy, for worldly 
enlightenment ; its annals speak of no lust of conquest among 
its people ; the brilliant achievements of foreign invasion, the 
high political and social aspirations which generally give lustre 
to the national life of many a people, belong not to them. But 
religious feeling, firm adherence to faith, invincible attachment 
to the form of Christianity they had received from St. Patrick, 
formed at all times their striking characteristics. 

From the day when their faith was first attacked by the 

1 Dr. Lingard,- evidently perplexed by this expression, asks himself, "What might 
its origin have been ? " and suggests that the name of lerne — the same as Erin — hav- 
ing been given to Ireland by the ancients, and the Greek j'epa — holy — bearing a great 
resemblance to it, Avienus might have thus fallen into a very natural mistake of con- 
foundiDg the one with the other. But, in the first place, Himilco's report was cer- 
tainly not written in Greek, but in Phoenician, and Avienus seems merely to have 
translated that report. Moreover, the word tepo begins with a very strong aspirate, 
equivalent to a consonant, while there are few vowels softer in any language than the 
first in Erin or lerne. Heeren does not attempt such an explanation, but concedes 
that the Carthaginians, as well as the Phoenicians before them, called Ireland the Holy 
Isle. 



526 MORAL FOEOE. 

Tudors did it cliiefly blaze fortb. into a special splendor, wbicb 
these pages liave striven faintly to represent. Before taking np 
the pen to write, after the serions study of documents, only one 
great feature struck us — that of a deep religious conviction ; and, 
after having seen what some writers have had to say recently, 
the same feature strikes us still. "We will not deny that this fact 
moved us to write, and the task was the more grateful, probably, 
because of our own personal religious character ; but we are 
confident that any layman, whatever might be his talent and 
disposition for describing worldly scenes, who took up Irish 
history, could find nothing else in it of real importance to render 
the annals of the race attractive to the common run of readers. 

And is not religion more capable of giving a people true 
greatness and real heroism than any worldly excellence ? Men 
of sound judgment will always find at least as much interest 
attached to the history of the first Maccabees as to that of 
Epaminondas ; and the self-sacrifice of the Yendean Cathelineau, 
with his " beads " and his " sacred heart," will always appear 
to an impartial judge of human character more truly admirable 
than that of any general or marshal of the first N^apoleon. Re- 
ligious heroism, having for object something far above even the 
purest patriotic fervor, can inspire deeds more truly worthy of 
human admiration than this, the highest natural feeling of the 
himaan heart ; and, for a Christian, the most inspiring pages of 
history are those which tell of the superhuman exertions of 
devoted knights to wrest the sepulchre of our Lord from the 
polluted hands of the Moslem. 

But religion did not confine her influence over Irishmen to 
the bravery which she breathed into them on the battle-field. 
Keligion truly constituted their inner life in all the vicissitudes 
of their national existence ; it was the only support left them in 
the darkest period of their annals, during the whole of the last 
century ; and, when the dawn came at last with the flush of 
hope, religion was the only halo which surrounded them. Their 
emigration even, their exodus chiefly, was in fact the sublime 
outpouring of a crucified nation, carrying the cross as their last 
religious emblem, and planting it in the wilds of far-distant con- 
tinents as their only escutcheon, and the sure sign which should 
apprise travellers of the existence of Irishmen in the deserts of 
iTorth America and Australia. 

Truly, those men are very ignorant of the Irish character who 
would abstract the religious feature from it, and paint the nation 
as they would any other European people, whose great aim in 
these modern days seems to be to forget the first fervor of their 
Christian origin. With the Irish this cannot be. The vivid 
warmth of their cradle has not yet cooled down ; and, if it would 
be indeed ridiculous to represent the English of the nineteenth 



MOEAL FORCE. 527 

century as the pious subjects of Alfred or Edward, it would be 
equally foolisb to depict the Irisli of to-day as the worldlings and 
godless of France, Italy, or Spain. The Irish patriot could not 
be like them, without deserting his standard and the colors for 
which his race has fought. The nation to which he has the 
honor of belonging is still Christian to the core ; and, if some 
few have really repudiated the love of the religion they took in 
at their mother's knee, the only means left them of remaining 
Irishmen, at least in appearance, is not to parade their total lack 
of this, the chief characteristic of their race. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



Anglo-Normans. {See Feudalism.) 

Antiquity of the Irish race, Preface, viii. 

Ard-Righ, importance of the, in Celtic 
countries, 25 ; authority of the, 27, 28. 

Association, needed for the uprising of 
the Irish race, 482-484 ; how, is to be 
understood, 519-523. 

Attacotts, were not slaves, 30. 

Australia, position of, 420, 421 ; im- 
portance of the position of, 421 ; situa- 
tion of the Irish at first in, 422 ; subse- 
quent status of the Irish in, 463-465 ; 
land-system in, at first, 468, 469 ; how 
it was altered subsequently, 469. {See. 
Hierarchy and Prophecy op Noah.) 

B 

Barbarism, the refusal of the Irish race 
to follow Europe, no proof of. Preface, 
siii. ; no, but real civiUzation in Ireland, 
250-253. 

Bards, number of, in Ireland, 15 ; patriot- 
ism of the, 16 ; preservation of the, by 
Columba, 15, 16. 



Calvinism of the first Ulster Protestants, 
294. 

Cathedrals, the, of Baltimore, 445 ; erec- 
tion of, promoted by the example of 
English Catholics, 448, 449 ; meaning 
of a, 449 ; vastness of, 450 ; under- 
taken, 451. 

Catholic, the majority of Irishmen al- 
ways, 301-303. 

Charitable Institutions, origin of, 455, 
et seq. ; history of, 456 ; number of, in 
the IJnited States, 452-455 ; necessity 
of all those, 457-460 ; in Australia, 463. 



Churches, Schools, Asylums, sums re" 
quired for building, 440-445 ; archi- 
tectural style of, 443, et seq. ; number 
of, in the Western States, 446, et seq. 

Cities, chosen by the Irish for dwelling in, 
in the United States, 435 ; chosen from 
the beginning for centres of Christian- 
ity, 436 ; reasons for choosing, 437, et 
seq. ; dangers averted by choosing, 438, 
et seq. 

Clanship, origin of, 22 ; territory in, 22, 
etseq. ; opposed to feudalism, 135, 137, 
139, 144, 153 ; conquers feudalism, 146, 
148. 

Communes, origin of, 170 ; no need of, in 
Ireland. 

Confiscation of land the object of Anglo- 
Norman invasion, 138, 151 ; new feat- 
ure in, under the first Stuart, 256 ; 
not arrested by prescription, 252 ; in 
Connaught, under Charles I., 264 ; un- 
der Cromwell, 276, 282-284 ; of Crom- 
well, perpetuated by Charles II., 280- 
283. 

Congregationalism, of Cromwell, 296. 

Crom Cruagh, character of the worship 
of, 72. 

Crusades, not preached in Ireland, 159 ; 
heresies brought by the, to Western 
Europe, 160. 

D 

Danes. {See Scandinavians.) 

Death, a punishment dreaded by Irish- 
men, 87; an object of desire, 87; res- 
ignation to, of the Irish, 88. 

Despotism, neither Catholic theology nor 
the Catholic hierarchy the cause of, in 
England, 243 ; causes of the, of the 
Tudors, 243, 244. 

Dublin, stronghold of the Danes, 126. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



629 



Education, laws against, in Ireland {see 
Penal Laws) ; still of an inferior kind 
in Ireland, 500 ; means of raising the 
level of, 501 ; projects of godless, 504- 
506 ; necessary for the uprising of the 
nation, 508, et seq. 

Emigration and Emigrants, originated by 
the Keformation, 376 ; of the soldiers 
under Cromwell, 274, 376 ; after the 
Williamite war, 376 ; through the 
eighteenth century, 877 ; effects of 
those, 378-380 ; of clergymen, 380, 
386, et seq. ; of women and children, 
275, 383-387 ; effects of those, 388- 
390 ; beginning of the voluntary Irish, 
391, et seq. ; position of Irish, in Amer- 
ica during the eighteenth century, 392- 
398 ; loss to the Church by this, not so 
complete as it is supposed, 399-401 ; 
beginning of the last, 403-405 ; situa- 
tion of Irish, 405-408 ; immediate 
causes of this, 408-413 ; to Canada, 
413-416 ; to the eastern provinces, 
416-418 ; to Australia, 422, et seq. ; 
to Australia, beneficial to Ireland, 466, 
et seq. ; to England, 469, et seq. ; char- 
acter of Irish, compared to the English, 
471-474 ; in general, 475, et seq. 

European Thought, the Irish refuse to 
follow, Preface, vii., and passim through 
the first half of the volume ; England, 
the actual leader of, 54-56 ; the Irish 
opposed to, 56. 

Exodus, causes of the, 425 ; first results, 
427-430 ; England repairs the first 
effects of the, 430-433 ; first fruits of 
the, 434, et seq. ; further favorable re- 
sults, 477-479 ; greater results of the, 
in Australia, 480-482 ; results of the, 
to be secured and increased by asso- 
ciation, 482, et seq, (See Churches, Ca- 
thedrals, Charitable Institutions.) 



Famine, no, among the ancient Irish, 308 ; 
after the Munster wars of Elizabeth, 
214 ; periodical, from the beginning of 
the eighteenth century, 308-312 ; of 
1846, description of, 425 ; of 1846, cause 
of the exodus, 412, 413, 427 ; perma- 
nent in Ireland, 409, et seq. 

Feudalism and Feudal, character of, 133 ; 
in England, 134 ; opposed to clanship, 
135, 137, 139, 144, 153 ; occupation of 
land by, 138-140; castles, 139; laws 
rejected by the Irish, 143 ; conquered 
by clanship, 146-148. 

File. {See Bards, 14, et seq.) 
34 



France and French, modern instability 
of the, 367, 368 ; reason why, has 
changed since last century. Preface, iv. ; 
Vendeans compared to Irish Tories, 
260-263. 

G 

Government (Representative), is, due to 
Protestantism ? 243 ; origin of, 353 ; 
not successful out of English-speaking 
countries, 353, 354 ; results of, in other 
countries, 357. 

Greece, philosophy of, an obstacle and 
danger to the primitive Church, 64, 65; 
philosophy of, the origin of many here- 
sies, 66, 67. 

H 

Harp, antiquity of the, 18; successful de- 
velopments of the, 19 ; universaUty of 
the use of the, in Ireland, 20, 21. 

Heresy, emanating from Greek philo- 
sophy, 66, 67 ; brought to Western Eu- 
rope by the Crusades, 160 ; mentioned 
in Ireland only once, 160 ; how, was 
put down in Ireland, 164 ; races in- 
clined to, 165, 169 ; the Irish untouched 
by the spirit of, 167. {See Rational- 
ism.) 

Hierarchy, in Australia, 423 ; developed 
in the United States by the exodus, 435 ; 
developed in Australia, 465, 466. 

Historians in Ireland. {See Literature.) 

Homage, as understood by the Irish, 138 ; 
meaning of the word, among feudal 
nations, 138. 

Home-Rule, the Irish have a right to, 
342 ; would not heal all the wounds of 
Ireland, 343 ; would not give a sufii- 
cient scope to representative govern- 
ment in Ireland, 355 ; what, would 
produce, 356 ; would not satisfy all the 
wants of the nation, 357. {See Irish 
Parliament.) 

K 

Kilkenny (yStefefeso/), 148 ; object of the, 
148 ; inoperative, 149, 150. 

Kilkenny {Confederation of), sketch of 
the, 266 ; in the, the clergy establish 
the right of resistance in self defence, 
267 ; a solid government founded by 
the, 268. 

Kings, provincial, 28. 



Land, in the clan-system, 22-24 ; im- 
portance of, in feudalism, 133, 135, 
158 ; the ob'ect of Norman invasion, 



530 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



151 ; gained by the Irish, 154 ; acts of 
the Irish Parliament with I'espect to, 
155 ; pressure for, the cause of the 
flight of the earls, 258. {See Confisca- 
tion.) 

Laws, feudal, contrasted with the Brehon, 
143 ; opinion of Edmund Burke on the 
penal, 299 ; fanaticism, more than greed, 
the cause of the penal, 299 ; unity of 
the penal, 300 ; the penal, took the 
political rights away, 801, 304; took 
civil rights away, 304-306, 309 ; took 
away human rights, 313, 314, 318, 319 ; 
effects of the penal, on the people, 320- 
324 ; cause of the strength of the Irish 
in resisting the penal, 325. 

Liegeman, as understood by the Irish in 
opposition to the feudal meaning of the 
word, 144. 

Literature, Celtic, lO-lY ; peculiarities 
of Celtic, 1*7, et seq. ; Irish, saved by the 
monks of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, 381-383. 

M 

Manicheism, primitive, 65, 66 ; Mediaeval, 
161. 

Martyrs, under Elizabeth, 224-228 ; un- 
der the penal laws, 314-318 ; in Eastern 
Asia, 461, 462. 

Mind, peculiarities of the Irish, 34, 80, 81. 

Missions, old Irish, 100. 

Monasteries, the Irish attached to, 93, 
195, 197 ; building of, 94, 9*7, 98 ; mul- 
titude of, 94, 95 ; literature of, 196 ; 
all the island occupied by, 196 ; rules 
of the primitive, 96 ; out of Ireland, 
101 ; destruction of, 194, 200-203. 

Monotheism of the Celtic nations, 69 ; 
the pagan Irish inclined to, 74. 

Moral force, of liberalism, 485, 488 ; of 
agitation, 488—494 ; was, defeated in 
the repeal agitation ? 492-494 ; objects 
of, 495 ; the proper means of restoring 
a proper system of education to Ireland, 
500-502, 504, 506. Through the last 
chapter, passim. 

Morality, Irish, pure, 35. 

Music, Irish, 18. 

N 

Nation, are the Irish a, and do they in- 
clude two ? 514-518. (See People.) 

Nature, view of, in the Irish mind, 85, 
91 ; united to grace, 96. 

Nobility, Henry VIII. tries to gain over 
the Irish, 178,181; Elizabeth first tries 
duplicity on the Irish, 207, 225 ; de- 



struction of the Anglo-Norman, in the 
-south, 213 ; in the north, 216 ; James 
I. destroys the Irish, in the north, 258 ; 
Cromwell destroys the, all over the isl- 
and, 274, 275 ; Vice's ideas of, inde- 
fensible, 328 ; feudal ideas of, 329 ; 
mediaeval ideas of, 329 ; Irish notions 
of, compared to other systems, 330- 
332 ; fall of the Irish, 333-335 ; what 
Englishmen thought of the fall of the 
Irish, 336 ; means employed to bring 
on the fall of the Irish, 336, 337 ; pol- 
icy of Cromwell toward the Irish, 338, 
339 ; destruction of the Irish, final, 
339-341. 

O 

Ollamh. {See Literature, 10, et,seq.) 
Oath, as a religious test, 297-301. 



Pale (English), how far the, was reduced 
under the Tudors, 145, 176. 

Parliament (Irish), origin of the, 147 ; 
corrected by 344 ; the Irish race ex- 
cluded from, 148, 345 ; of Kilkenny, 
148 ; acts of, to wrest the land from 
the Irish, 155 ; Irish, in the eighteenth 
century, 297, 298 ; record of Irish, 343, 
et seq. ; general object of Irish, 344, 
345 ; of 1782, 352 ; prosperity from 
the Irish, of 1782, reduced to Protest- 
ants, 349-351. {See Government, rep- 
resentative.) 

Pauperism, effect of the penal laws in Ire- 
land, 306-308 ; actual, 495-498 ; can 
be remedied by moral force, 498-500 ; 
to be removed chiefly by a new land- 
tenure law, 507. 

Peace Party, opposed to the -Nkmcionists, 
268 ; leaders of the, 269 ; results of 
the, 270. 

People, first mention of the Irish, in the 
English state papers, 178, 179 ; Irish, 
opposed to Protestantism, 183 ; Irish, 
born of the opposition to the new here- 
sies, 186 ; history of the, in general, 
187, et seq. ; the, growing stronger in 
Ireland, 189 ; the Irish, created and 
nurtured by religion and love of coun- 
try, 190, etseq., 287-289; the Irish, in- 
cluding both the old race and the An- 
glo-Normans, 193 ; the Irish, united by 
the love of the religious orders, 199, et 
seq. ; policy of the destruction of the, 
213, et seq.; the Tudors ignoring the, 
335 ; what a Christian, can do in our 
days, 500 ; the Irish can form a strong, 
513. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



531 



Persecution, under Elizabeth, 226 ; spies 
used for, 22*7 ; secret police for, 227 ; 
invention of secret police by Elizabeth 
for, 337 ; under the penal laws, 314- 
318. 

Philosophy, of history, what it ought to 
be. Preface, v. ; Greek, 64 ; Eastern, ob- 
stacle to Christianity, 65 ; Greek, source 
of heresy, 66. 

Priesthood, nature of the Christian, 88 ; 
the Irish attached to the, 89, et seq. ; 
power of the, 92. 

Prophecy of Noah, text of the, 39 ; ful- 
filment of. the, gradually prepared. 
Chapter ii., passim ; the Irish mission 
in the fulfilment of the, 56, 57 ; details 
of the fulfilment of the, 400 ; situation 
of Australia favorable to the fulfilment 
of the, 420, 421 ; further details of, 
428-430, 460, 461 ; with respect to 
Australia, 466 ; steam and electricity 
helping the fulfilment of the, 483. 

Protestantism, how, was first introduced 
into Ireland, 180, et seq. ; the people 
opposed to, 183 ; the nobility soon 
aroused against, 185 ; second attempt 
to introduce, by Elizabeth, 204 ; easily 
accepted by England, 230 ; easily re 
ceived by Scandinavians, 232, 233 
helped by Scandinavian rapacity, 235 
not promotive of freedom and civiliza 
tion in England, 240, et seq. ; not the 
result of a higher civilization in Eng- 
land, 244 ; efiects of, on England and 
other nations, 246 ; as to representative 
government, 247 ; Ireland not prepared 
for, 249-253. 

R 

Race, what is understood by, 2, 3 ; power 
of expansion of the Celtic, 4-6 ; Celtic, 
with respect to a sea-faring life, 6-9 ; 
literature of the Celtic, 9-18 ; music 
and art of the Celtic, 18-21 ; govern- 
ment in the Celtic, 21-24 ; social state 
in the Celtic, 24-38 ; Asiatic and Afri- 
can, formerly full of energy, 39 ; de- 
generacy of the same, 41 ; first appear- 
ance of the Japhetic, 41 ; its develop- 
ments in Rome, 43 ; Christianity renders 
the Japhetic, able to fulfil its mission, 
45 ; spread of the Japhetic, in modern 
times, 47-50 ; means furnished to it for 
expansion, 50. 

Rationalism:, nature of, 81 ; no trace of, 
among the Irish, 81 ; of John Scotus 
Erigena, 82 ; alibi passim. 

Rebellion and Rebels, were the Irish ? 



141, 186, 209,^563-., 219; first general, 
144 ; a Catholic a, in the eyes of Queen 
Elizabeth, 217, et seq. ; bishops and 
monks martyrs, not, 220, et seq. 

Religious Orders, old, replaced by more 
modern institutions, 199 ; the Church 
in Ireland created by, 195, 196 ; could 
not be destroyed in Ireland, 197. 

Resistance {right of), nature of the, 
359, 360-363 ; of Tories iu Ireland, 
360-362. 

Revelation, primitive, 68. 

Revolutionary Spirit, the Irish, from 
the beginning, opposed to the, 266, 290, 
291 ; the Irish opposed tO the, in mod- 
ern times, 372, 373 ; nature of the, 
363, 364 ; origin of the, 364-366 ; his- 
tory of the, 366-368 ; its actual form, 
369-371 ; idem, 438. 

Rome, utilitarianism of, 60 ; civilization 
of, an obstacle to the Christian ideal, 
61 ; idolatry of, a greater obstacle, 62, 
et seq. ; philosophy of, the source of 
great evils to Christianity, 64-67. 

Scandinavia and Scandinavians, de- 
scription of, 107 ; the people of, differs 
from the Teutons, 107 ; religion of, 
108-110 ; social state of, 110 ; warfare 
of, 111, 112; characteristics of the 
mind of, 114 ; success of the, in Eng- 
land and on the Continent, 117-121 ; 
aptitude of, for commerce and munici- 
pal Ufe, 122 ; conversion of, in Ireland, 
126, 127 ; the, adopt Irish manners, 
128 ; no trace left of, in Ireland, 129, 
130; aptitude of, for Protestantism, 
232, e< seq. 

Shanachy. {See Literature, 13.) 

Slavery, in Ireland, domestic, not social, 
33, 

Social Peelings, Irish, 34-39. 
Sovereign Rights, left to the Irish by 

the Anglo-Normans, 141, 146. 
Spies and Informers, operations of, in 

Ireland, 226, 227 ; system of, invented . 

by Elizabeth, 336, 337; some Irishmen 

found among, 338, 
Statutes of Kilkenny, object of the, 148 ; 

inoperative, 149, 150. 
St, Patrick, mission of, 76, et seq. ; su- 
pernatural teaching of, 86. 
St. Thomas, doctrine of, on government, 

241, et seq. 

Supernatural, the Christian religion emi- 
nently, 84 ; Irish love of the, 86, 87, 
et seq. 



532 



mDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



T 

Tanistry, nature of, 25, 21 ; disadvan- 
tages of, 333. 
Titles {defective), commission for, 260, 261. 

U 

Ulster Protestant Colony, character 
of the, 259, 260 ; the, could not coa- 
lesce with the Irish, 282 ; the, under 
William III, 293 ; the, reduced by the 
Tolunteer movement, 349 ; the, as it 
exists to-day, 516-519. 



United States, energy of the, 418, 419; 
the, promote the mission of Irishmen, 
440, 443. 

Universities, old, in Ireland, 173 ; dan- 
gers from European, 1*74. 



Volunteers (Irish), origin of the, 345 ; 
history of the, 346 ; the, exclude the 
Catholics from the franchise, 346- 
848. 



THE END. 



TWELVE YEARS OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY ! 



APPLETONS' AMERICAN 

A:Nri^UAL CYCLOPAEDIA 



■fo:r isTS. 



This book, as a record of the important events of the past year, is the hest, and in fact the only, 
authority on all matters relating to the material and intellectual development of the year, embracing 
Political, Civil, Military, and Social Afpaies of All Countries ; Important Public Docu- 
ments, Histonj, Biography, Statistics, Commerce, Finance, Eeligion, Literature, Science, Agriculture, 
Mechanical Industry, Politics, etc. 

The Publishers beg to announce that the twelfth volume of this invaluable book is now ready, 
being, in fact, the second of the second decade of a work already found indispensable for reference 
in every well-selected library. It stands alone, as the only work of tlie kind in the English language. 
The series was commenced in 18C1, and has been published annually since that year, of the same size 
and in the same style as the " New American Cyclopaedia." Each volume is complete in itself, and 
is confined to the results of its year. 

The volume of the Annual Cyclopedia for ISTS presents the satisfactory settlement of all disputed 
questions between the United States and Great Britain, by the unusual means of arbitration ; the 
peaceful operation of a republican form of government in the ancient kingdom of France, and the most 
astonishing manifestation of national resources on the part of her people ; the voluntary resignation of 
his throne'by the King of Spain, which was accepted by the people, his retirement, and the gradual 
introduction of another republic in Europe; the condition and progress of Italy since the removal of 
the capital to Rome, and the exercise of the entire temporal power by the King; the reforms in Germany 
tending to limit the power of the people, and increase, concentrate, and consolidate the control of the 
Emperor over the numerous States, and to remove all organized sources of opposition to his absolute 
sway, together with other changes brought about under the influence of popular or monarchical i)rin- 
ciples among the people of Europe. The important local questions and the relations of tlie various 
nationalities of the world, arising from race, numbers, military power, wealth, and the combined antag- 
onistic interests in operation, are here set forih with fullness and completeness. 

The interest of the affairs of the United States was increased by the recurrence of a presidential 
election. The appeal to the people on the part of the Government for an approval of its conduct, and a 
renewal of authority in the hands of those exercising it, while the determined but confused efforts of 
opponents were exerted to secure its condemnation and dismissal from office, led to the manifestation 
of some very unusual phases of political action, whi ch are stated in these pages. The rapid improve- 
ment of all sections of the Union since the late disasters, the influence of novel civil and political 
telations on a portion of the citizens, the eft'orts lo secure equal civil and social privileges to every one, 
the developments by industry as displayed in the census, the rapid advance of all the States, and 
especially the Southern, the material improvement of the people, and the measures adopted by Con- 
gress, with the debates thereon, are herein fully pre sented. 

The details of the internal affairs of the United States embrace the resources and expenditures of 
the Federal Government ; the decrease of the public debt, and the reduction of taxation ; the extension 
of manufactures ; the decline of the commercial interest; the banking system; the expansions and 
contractions of values; the extension of internal trade and commerce; the financial affairs of the States; 
their debts and resources; the various political conventions assembled during the year, with I heir plat- 
forms ; the results of elections ; the proceedings of State Legislatures ; the increase of educational and 
charitable institutions; the rapid extension of transportation by railroads, and of communication by 
telegraphs, and all those matters which exhibit the rapid progress of the people. 

Under Diplomatic Correspondence, will be found the proceedings of the Court of Arbitration, at 
Geneva. 

The discoveries in the various branches of Astronomical, Chemical, and other sciences, with new 
applications to useful purposes, are extensively presented. 

The improvements of Mechanical Industry have been marked and useful, although less extensive 
than in many previous years. 

Geographical Discoveries have been actively pushed forward, and with some surprising results. 

The record of Literature and Literary Progress is not less interesting than in any previous year, 
and ample details are given of its state, as well at home as in England, and in each of the countries on 
the Continent of Europe. 

The history of the religious denominations of the country, with the results of their conventions, 
and their branches, membership, and progress of opinions, are here given from official sources. 

The memory of deceased persons of note, in every department ot society, is briefly noticed. 

All important documents, messages, orders, treaties, and letters from official persons, have been 
inserted entire. , 

The volume also contains fine Steel Portraits of Hon. Horace Gkeelet, Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, 
and Hon. Alexander H. Stephens. 

One Large Octavo Volume of 839 pages. 

Price, in Cloth, $5.00; Library Leather, $6.00, Half Turkey, $6.50; Half Russia, $7.50. 

D. APPLETOIT & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 

|^~ Tlie Annual Cycloycedia for 1873 will be published in May, 1874. 



THE IRKS OF PR OF. JOHN TY IALL. LL.D., FIS. 

Heat as a Mode of Motion. 

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"My aim has been to rise to the level of these questions from a basis so elementary, that a person pos- 
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On Sound. 

A Course of Eight Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 
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" In the following pages I have tried to render the science of Acoustics interesting to all intelligent per- 
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Fragments of Science for Unscientific 
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" My motive in writing these papers was a desire to extend sympathy for science beyond the limits of 
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Light and Electricity. 

Notes of Two Courses of Lectures before the Royal Institution of Great Brit- 
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Faraday as a Discoverer. 

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The A uthor. 

Forms of Water, in Clouds, Rain, Rivers, 
Ice, and Glaciers. 

This is the first volume of the International Scientific Series, and is a valuable 
and interesting work. One vol., i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

Contributions to Molecular Physics in the 
Domain of Radiant Heat. 

A Series of Memoirs published in the "Philosophical Transactions" and 
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Lectures on Light delivered in America. 

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tJCT 6-1949 




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